‘Think of it, Eliza! Think of chocolates, and gold, and taxis and diamonds!” Professor Henry Higgins tells Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, attempting to woo the Cockney flower seller with the trappings of “the good life.”
While the sassy, streetwise “guttersnipe” in Edwardian London believes only rich people ride taxis, Eliza eventually becomes refined enough to ride in those automobiles she often watched well-heeled operagoers get into at Covent Garden.
Amanda Lisman, who plays Eliza opposite Brian Richmond as Higgins in Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre’s production of My Fair Lady that opens Aug. 6, does her iconic character one better. The affable actor has been cruising around town in a candy-apple-red 2011 Mazda Miata MX5 convertible, her lustrous red hair blowing in the breeze as if she owned this topless wonder.
“I’d have to win it,” laughs Lisman, confessing she owns just an ordinary set of wheels. “Theatre actors don’t own luxury cars.”
Dozens of patrons have already had a chance to get behind the wheel — albeit without moving — during productions of Uncle Vanya and Brighton Beach Memoirs in the lobby of the McPherson Playhouse, where the Miata is parked.
Last time we checked, there was a one-in-305 chance of winning the eye-catcher purchased from Pacific Mazda.
Tickets are $50 (three for $125), with the raffle continuing until Aug. 26, a week after My Fair Lady takes her final bow.
After test-driving this beauty, Lisman has deemed it “perfect” for sunny days in Victoria.
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“On beautiful days like these, I’d happily cruise along Dallas Road.”
Richmond jokingly refers to the Miata as the “midlife crisis” prize.
“Aren’t red sports cars the archetypical midlife crisis car, something every man when he reaches his 40s just has to have — and possibly every woman, too?” he said.
“I’m drawn to that idea that we recapture those periods from our past that we don’t feel we lived fully.”
He cheerfully admits he stole the raffle idea from Saskatoon’s Persephone Theatre, which he founded in 1974, when he spotted a BMW convertible being raffled after he returned to re-direct Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave with Zachary Stevenson.
The Miata, first introduced in 1989, is one of the best sports cars money can buy and the “best-selling two-seater sports car of all time,” according to Guinness World Records.
The Blue Bridge roadster worth $20,000 is a rare deal since it has an automatic transmission, said Pacific Mazda owner John Pollen.
Many Miata fans, including Pollen, will tell you such a sports car should ideally be driven with a standard. Complex magazine went so far as to suggest upgrading to automatic is like “paying to replace Kate Upton’s breasts with Rush Limbaugh’s.”
If you’ve driven a Miata you’ll already know how dependable these cars are, and how amazingly they hug the corners.
“They’re so much fun to drive,” says John Allott, who runs Club Miata Vancouver Island. “It’s not like a muscle car. It’s just a joy. These cars were built for cornering. That’s what sets it apart. It’s a true roadster.”
Allott, 59, who drives a “velocity red” 2004 Mazda Speed Miata, dismisses its initial reputation as a “girly car.”
“They’ve had ‘experts’ who talk about how it’s not really a sports car, but they’ve never driven it,” said Allott, who with fellow Miata lovers takes his out on the Island’s winding roads. “I usually chicken out before the car does. It’s so balanced.”
Howie Siegel, the Victoria actor and Pagliacci’s co-founder, loves the Miata so much, he bought two.
“Instead of getting a mistress I got a Miata,” quipped Siegel. “The Miata’s cheaper because there is less upkeep.”
Siegel, who divides his time between here and Phoenix, Ariz., where he lives with partner Janet Rothman-Sickler, founding director of the Actor’s Lab, has a 2007 white ragtop Miata there.
In Victoria, where he’s rehearsing for his role as Oscar opposite Eric Holmgren in director Dick Stille’s production of The Odd Couple that opens Sept. 18 at Metro Studio, he drives a grey 2008 hardtop.
“It was my way of restoring my independence, so to speak,” said Siegel, 68, a father of four with two grandchildren.
His previous automobiles included a 1952 Pontiac, and family cars from a Dodge Magic Wagon to a Ford Taurus with eight seatbelts.
“The Miata’s one of the most dependable automobiles I’ve ever driven,” he said.
“It does what it’s supposed to do.”