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Breakdown
Directed by Jessica Kubzansky
No roles will be understudied.
Dialects are incredibly important in this production, so excellent skills required. Most of the upper class folk need RP, most of the lower class folk need cockney, and we will refine from inside the production.
SEEKING:
Henry Higgins: (Male, 40s-50s) Professor of Phoenetics, a brilliant, arrogant man whose genius at identifying and modifying dialects allows his own slipshod manners and unconventional societal behavior to be seen as the eccentricity of genius. He is by turns confidently arrogant, grandiloquent, charming, cutting, clever, and in many ways a manchild who has never had to grow up. While he is prepared to take a flower girl and shape her into a Duchess, he himself is no example of proper behavior. Henry is by turns grandiose, kind, charming, cutting, childlike, and absolutely unconscious of his effect on others. Because of this peculiar blind spot, he thinks nothing of sculpting a woman’s fate on a dare and never anticipates the consequence. His journey should be one of arrogance to discovery.
Eliza Doolittle: Female (20s). A common flower girl from Lisson Grove, feral and feisty, all instinct, determined to better herself and not get kicked in the process. She is a strong-willed street urchin whose journey to a more refined young woman has many stops along the way, from the patina of elegance that hasn’t become inherent (a crust of civility over the streetsmarts, a now proper accent employed on some very improper speech), to an educated, far-seeing young woman who suddenly discovers both longing, other ambitions, and appetite, along with a new understanding that far from being elevated and set free she has simply exchanged one kind of box for another.
Colonel Pickering: Male (50-70) A old-fashioned scholar and gentleman in the true sense of the word, passionate about dialect and languages, kindly, has spent a great deal of time in East India--a Pukka Sahib as they say. He’s not above making a sporting bet about dialect and class when his interest is piqued, but at base insists on treating people like human beings.
Mrs. Higgins: Female (60s to 70). Henry’s mother. Wise, intelligent, with a wry, dry sense of humor, she is herself broad-minded in her thinking, but likes to observe societal conventions and is constantly challenged by her son’s unconventional, occasionally boorish ways. Not above going against her son when his blind arrogance deserves it.
Alfred Doolittle: (Male, 40s – 60). Eliza’s father, a dustman, a cockney rogue, cocky, brilliant in his own understanding of his own morality and code of ethics, exceedingly clever with language and the cat who always lights on his feet, proud of being one of the undeserving poor, and as a result, finds himself elevated to middle-class respectability with, to him, horrifying consequences.
Mrs. Pearce: (Female, 40s to 60) The long-suffering housekeeper for Henry Higgins. Tart, can be intimidating, keeps his house running amid the chaos, but can also be charmed by her irascible, unpredictable boss. She waivers between horror and wild pity for the waif of a young woman who has been thrust under her roof.
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill: (Female, 40 to 50s). Financially of the middle-class, but perhaps used to belong to the upper class, and still behaving as though that’s her milieu. She longs to still be part of good society, and her financial strictures very much get in her way. The mother of Freddy and Clara, she is trying to do her best for her children, with great compassion for their youth and situation.
Freddy Eysnford-Hill: (Male, 20s to mid30s). Somewhat bumbling, ineffectual, but charming in an earnest, young gentlemanly British sort of way, henpecked a bit by his sister, eager to please, well-meaning, eventually bowled over and utterly charmed by the vision that is the new Eliza Dolittle.
Clara Eysnford-Hill: (Female, 20s) The daughter of Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, she feels the financial restrictions keenly and this constant need to grasp for what they can’t quite reach makes her shrill, occasionally unkind, and preoccupied with fitting in with the latest trends in both society and fashion. By turns petulant, yearning, snobbish, and gullibly charmed.
THE ENSEMBLE:
Two Men and Two Women: To play: bystanders, servants, and others of various classes, ages, so facilities with accents and characters a plus.
Anyone unavailable to audition can send an emailed submission to info@Florescasting.com.
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