The 2001-02 season marks another first for theater in Chicago. Kate Fry, a young actress who has chalked up dozens of stage credits since she broke into the scene here in 1993, has become the only actress in the history of the world to attempt portrayals in the same season of Eliza Doolittle in both George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and its musical verson, “My Fair Lady.” (This claim to fame is not something we’ve been able to confirm in the record books, but it seems a safe bet that it’s true. If you have evidence to the contrary, please let us know.)
Fry, who got her first paying theater job in the Chicago area eight years ago, playing the saintly wife of George Bailey in Drury Lane Oakbrook’s musical production of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” originally had signed to do only “My Fair Lady,” next spring with Court Theatre. She had sung the role, for a short run, while she was still attending Northwestern University, and last year, in a benefit program for Court, she sang a few of the show’s songs. Director Gary Griffin, impressed with that performance, asked Fry to take on the famous role, originated by Julie Andrews in the 1956 Broadway production, for an intimate, two-piano version he is planning for a Court engagement that runs April 27-May 26, 2002.
Fry had wanted to take another crack at the role of the Cockney flower girl who is turned into a lady by the irascible phonetics professor Henry Higgins. “So, of course, I agreed to do it at Court,” she says.
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Not long after she had accepted that job, Fry got a call from an unsuspecting William Brown, who is to stage “Pygmalion” this autumn at Apple Tree Theatre in Highland Park, asking her if she wanted to play Eliza in his production of Shaw’s play.
“When I told him I was already set to do `My Fair Lady’ at Court,” Fry says, “he paused and said, `Well, think about it.’ I said, `It could be weird.’ He said, `Yes, or it could be great.'”
In the end, she decided to go for it; The great adventure begins Tuesday, when rehearsals start for the Oct. 1-28 Apple Tree engagement. She won’t exactly be repeating herself in the two roles, though. She’ll be working with different co-stars: Daniel J. Travanti as Higgins, Roger Mueller as his amiable sidekick Col. Pickering and Bill McGough as Eliza’s rascal father Alfred P. Doolittle at Apple Tree and Kevin Gudahl, John Reeger and Bradley Mott in the same respective roles in the musical at Court.
Charles Newell, artistic director of Court, recalls that when Fry told him of her double play, she said, “Well, at least I’ll have the chance to really get into my character.”