Thumbnail: Rebecca and Phillip Dyke are Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins in LRT's production of "My Fair Lady." | Photo by Heather Polen (Updated at 2 p.m. to correct an error. General admission tickets to My Fair Lady are $20, NOT $70.) Rex Harrison may be iconic as Henry Higgins, having played the phonetician into the 1980s, but Phillip Dyke says his version will be different. “I’m more of a singer than he is, that’s one major difference,” he told Redwood Voice Community News. “It’s always hard to critique your own work, but one of the things I try to do as an actor for any role is not spend too much time looking at the work of other actors who have performed the roles previously because I don’t want to be copying the work they’re doing.” Dyke will star alongside his wife Rebecca in Lighthouse Repertory Theatre’s production of My Fair Lady, which will open on Friday. LRT’s interpretation of Lerner and Lowe’s musical will be a return to the organization’s old stomping grounds at the Crescent Elk Auditorium, it’s also the first time LRT has taken on such a large-scale production since their performance of Honk in 2016. Rebecca Dyke as Eliza Doolittle dreams of a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air in LRT's production of My Fair Lady. | Photo by Heather Polen Dyke, who is also the director, said musical director David Sedgwick had given LRT leaders a few different options for taking on a big classic production. My Fair Lady got everyone within LRT excited, generated some buzz in the community and is one of the “biggest of the big musicals," he said. “We have about 21 people on stage and we’ve had probably just as many people working behind the scenes as well on various things,” Dyke said. “There’s lots of costume work, lots of scenery work, we built some furniture for the show and we will be raffling off some of the props and set pieces as well as a fundraiser for the organization.” In addition to Dyke as Henry Higgins and Rebecca Dyke as Eliza Doolittle, the players in My Fair Lady include Andres Monreal as Alfred P. Doolittle and Kurt Kurtis as Col. Pickering. “He’s the one that bets that [Higgins] can’t transform Eliza from a cockney flower girl into a lady,” Dyke said. Phillip and Rebecca Dyke moved to California from New York about four years ago. Having worked in educational and regional theater for about 30 years, Dyke said he’s also directed everything from straight plays to lots of big musicals including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and classic Rogers and Hammerstein productions. “The first place I always start with is the script,” he said. “I always go back to the text and try to discover what the authors were trying to get across to their audience.” Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady features Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from Henry Higgins who in turn bets Pickering that he can pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy ball. Dyke said in addition to determining how many actors will be needed, directing a large production includes figuring out the scenery and the costumes. “I think almost everyone has at least three different [costume] changes and some people have more,” he said. My Fair Lady is one of those productions where the costumes are just as much of a character as the players themselves, Dyke said. The play will feature large elaborate hats for the Ascot race and gowns at the ball. For the men, Dyke described their costumes at the ball as more of a uniform with their white tie and tails. There’s jewelry and complicated hair styles and for the upperclass characters, a lot of costume changes, he said. “We have the lower class side of things from London’s East End,” Dyke said, adding that the production’s costumer, Akarya has been working very hard to get everything done. “The Cockney people are living in poverty and Eliza starts out by selling flowers that she buys for cheap at the flower market, and that’s how she supports herself. We got those characters who are in clothing that’s not going to be current for that time period. Things are going to be patched or are maybe not the cleanest and probably handed down for several generations.” Because it’s the first time in nearly 10 years that LRT has put on a large-scale musical — smaller productions Nunsense and This is Crescent City were held at the Cultural Center — finding creative ways to use its resources has been instrumental for My Fair Lady. There’s been a lot of begging and borrowing and organizations have made some donations, Dyke said. Some organizations have also made donations for the raffle as well, he said. “We’ve been trying to make community partnerships as well as we go along because we can all support one another,” he said. “This is a small enough town, it’s good for us to help out when another organization [needs] it and we’re available.” My Fair Lady will open on Friday at the Crescent Elk Auditorium and will run for three weekends with performances at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. matinees on Sunday. General admission tickets are $70 $20 with discounts for students, seniors and low-income individuals. Tickets for Sunday matinees are $15. To purchase tickets, click here.