Tewksbury residents Celia Couture and Allisa Palagne among cast and creative team to bring Wellesley Players My Fair Lady to the stage

The hummable, quotable, wonderfully enjoyable musical for the whole family! The story, the songs, the characters -- you know and love them. A Broadway hit when it debuted in 1956, this fan-favorite musical has gone on to win Tony Awards, launch careers and be adapted into the Oscar-winning beloved film. The Wellesley Players brings together an award-winning team to present this beautiful musical in a manner that speaks to today’s audiences. When Professor Henry Higgins bets he can transform a Cockney flower girl into an aristocratic lady, he doesn’t anticipate that Eliza Doolittle will end up transforming him. Based on George Bernard Shaw’s delightful social satire Pygmalion, Lerner and Loewe’s charming and beloved musical features such unforgettable numbers as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” it’s no wonder everyone — not just Henry Higgins — falls in love with Eliza Doolittle. This show is the standard by which all others are measured. The production will feature the sparkling two-piano orchestration, crafted with the approval of Lerner and Loewe by the show’s original arranger of dance music. The cast and crew of Wellesley Players’ production are drawn from talent throughout Eastern Massachusetts.

The show’s creative team is led by Tewksbury resident and director Celia Couture. Couture has had a long string of theatrical successes running over the past decade, winning a myriad of awards including Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theater (EMACT) awards for Best Director and Best Show, Moss Hart Awards and regional festival competition winners. Last summer, Couture and her talented cast from the Burlington Players went on to the National Festival in Indiana and won the Best Production award for Radium Girls, the show was also nominated in nine technical as well as acting categories.

With those successes behind her, Couture is eager to bring this production to the stage. “I am most excited about bringing this iconic musical to the stage with a two-piano arrangement and 20 actors playing multiple roles. I am also thrilled that our artistic team came up with unique ways to create the environment of the play. Rather than seeming a traditional study for Henry, we’ve simplified his surroundings without compromising what he does for a living. I am also fortunate to have multi-talented actors and actresses who are asked to act, sing and dance as they play multiple characters.”

What Couture enjoys most about directing all these shows is the “work and commitment of community theatre actors.” Among those actors in this show is fellow Tewksbury resident Allisa Palagne. The two have worked together before, in fact going back to when Palagne was a teenager. Most recently they worked together last year on Les Miserables with Concord Players. Palagne played Eponine, and this was her favorite stage experience. She recalls, “It was such a wonderful experience and a dream role.”

In My Fair Lady, Palagne enjoys taking on several roles. “It’s really fun...lots of costumes! I am a cockney flower girl in the dance ensemble, a maid in the Higgins household, a high society woman at the Ascot Race and the ball. It’s great to wear so many different hats!”

Palagne especially enjoys the relationship she has built with Couture, “as a director and a friend, and the ritual she has with a cast before the curtain goes up. It is called the “white glove” and it means a lot to every person who works on the show. It is given every performance night in recognition of someone in the cast and crew who has gone about their business quietly and competently throughout the show process. Following that presentation, the cast and crew members form a giant circle, hold hands, and pass some “energy” (by squeezing hands) around the circle. Celia always leaves us with words of encouragement, support and love to make that show the best show we have done, til the next night. It may sound like something that is not too exciting when I write it down, but it is such a wonderful way to be sent on stage.”

What Palagne especially enjoys about community theater is “the friendships, the bonds, the memories. There is nothing like theatre. People who don’t do it think we are crazy and they don’t get that when we say “I can’t, I have rehearsal”, it is a good thing. The theatre community is small, but wonderful.”

When not onstage or backstage, Palagne is a special education preschool teacher in the Tewksbury public school system..

The show will be directed by Celia Couture with music direction by Art Finstein, choreography by Kelly Murphy and set design by Ruth Neeman.

My Fair Lady will be performed at the Arsenal Center of the Arts, Mosesian Theatre in Watertown from April 10-19. Don’t miss it! To reserve tickets please visit: www.wellesleyplayers.org. Discounts for groups are available. Order early as seating is reserved.

Cast photos by Jonathan Sachs