Scarborough theatre world's Tim Tubbs and Michael O'Brien team up for My Fair Lady at the Kirk Theatre in Pickering

The Lerner and Loewe musical is on at Kirk Theatre, Pickering, later this month.

Michael is a regular performer with Pickering Musical Society and it’s Tim’s first appearance on stage at the Kirk.

Tim is playing the lead role of Henry Higgins and Michael is his colleague Colonel Pickering in the musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s witty comedy Pygmalion, which originally starred Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews and Stanley Holloway before the blockbusting 1964 film with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.

Higgins, a phonetics professor, accepts his friend Pickering's bet to teach Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, to speak beautifully and pass her off as an aristocrat at a grand ball.

Eliza is an unlikely Cinderella, coaxed and bullied into her new role by the arrogant, misogynist Higgins.

When a prince charming appears in the person of man-about-town Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Higgins finds himself unexpectedly attached to his ‘creation’ while Eliza struggles for independence and a new life of her own.

Set in 1913, My Fair Lady offers contrasting scenes of upper-class splendour at Ascot Races and an Embassy Ball alongside the down-to-earth vitality of the old Covent Garden market and Eliza’s cheerfully vulgar dustman father Alfred Doolittle, played by society regular Marcus Burnside.

Danielle Long, well known as Principal Boy in Pickering’s annual pantomimes, plays Eliza – her first principal role in a musical.

“I'm really enjoying rehearsals,” said Danielle, "and finding the character of Eliza both challenging and fun to perform.”