Arts&Life
theater
38 | FEBRUARY 20 • 2020
‘With a Little Bit of Luck’
Audiences can catch
Adam Grupper in a lead
role in My Fair Lady.
JULIE SMITH YOLLES CONTRIBUTING WRITER F
or a nice Jewish guy from Brooklyn,
Adam Grupper has spent the past few
years getting to church on time.
Grupper — pronounced “grouper,” like
the fish, and, yes, he’
s been kidded about it
his whole life — has had a stellar Broadway
ride since his stage debut about 30 years ago,
including plum roles in Wicked, The Addams
Family, Into the Woods, The Secret Garden,
Guys and Dolls, Brighton Beach Memoirs and
Bartlett Sher’
s revival of Fiddler on the Roof.
He reunited with Sher when the direc-
tor helmed Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick
Loewe’
s award-winning revival of My Fair
Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw’
s orig-
inal play, Pygmalion, at Lincoln Center that
ran for 548 performances, closing in July
2019. The show, one of the most beloved
in Broadway history, is the musical tale of
Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney guttersnipe who
begrudgingly accepts phonetics lessons from
a professor in his quest to reform her into
a society woman. Eliza’
s father, Alfred P
.
Doolittle, is the town drunk who’
s at the helm
of some of the liveliest song-and-dance num-
bers in the show — “With a Little Bit of Luck”
and “Get Me to the Church on Time.
”
In the revival’
s initial run, Grupper was
featured in the Loverly Quartet and was
an understudy for Alfred P. Doolittle and
Colonel Pickering, who helps Professor
Henry Higgins teach Eliza to speak like a
duchess.
Now, Grupper is starring in the show’
s
North American tour as Alfred P. Doolittle
and will be headlining when it comes to
Michigan State University’
s Wharton Center
for Performing Arts in East Lansing Feb.
26-March 1.
“Playing the part of Doolittle has come
full circle for me,” Grupper says. The first
time he played the role, “I was a shy 14-year-
old, and our director saw something in me
and cast me as Doolittle in my very first
high school production. It was a life-chang-
ing event for me. It’
s so delicious to revisit
this role so many years later as an adult.”
Grupper, firmly in middle age, is expect-
ed to do a lot of dancing in the role. “These
numbers are very physically demanding,
and I’
m no spring chicken,
” Grupper says.
“Thankfully, Christopher Gattelli, our chore-
ographer, has modified the numbers to make
me look better than I am.
”
Grupper says he is nothing like the char-
acter he portrays on stage. “Doolittle is very
different from me,
” he adds. “He’
s very rau-
cous and, in our production, he’
s a lot more
details
My Fair Lady will be performed at
the Wharton Center in East Lansing
Feb. 26-March 1. For tickets,
go to whartoncenter.com.
TOP: Adam Grupper in the center of
the action during My Fair Lady.
JOAN MARCUS