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