Man behind the fairytales lived one of his own

A Carmel couple have penned a play that is sharing a stage usually set aside for Shakespeare.

Andersen: A Fairy Tale Life, a musical about Hans Christian Andersen’s life, is part of the final season of Indy Bardfest. The play will stage Oct. 18 to 27 at Shelton Auditorium, Butler Arts Center, 1000 W. 42nd St., Indianapolis.

Carmel’s own June McCarty Clair wrote the play itself while her husband John Clair wrote the lyrics to all the songs and Derek Hakes composed the music for this show.

The Clairs are no strangers to playwright roles, having previously penned a play for Beef & Boards about Pocahantas, as well as a southwestern melodrama called Cimarron Sue, a separate show about a dyslexic dancer.

Andersen: A Fairy Tale Life, follows the life of Hans Christian Andersen starting with his challenging childhood in the dinky Danish town of Odense.

“I was so fascinated by what he went through in order to become the most famous man in Denmark, starting with the fact that he was born in this teeny tiny town in one on one of the islands of Denmark,” Playwright and Director June McCarty Clair said. “He was really born into abject poverty. His mother washed clothes in the river to get some income. His father died when he was nine. It was really a hardscrabble life. Somewhere in there, he got the idea that, by golly, he was going to be famous and successful. Even though he was poor, you couldn’t talk him out of that.”

Andersen’s life was a bit of a fairytale itself. He was a strange boy born into poverty to a superstitious mother. Andersen’s mother took him to a fortune teller who predicted that Odense would be filled with torches and people chanting his name … and it came to pass!

In this play, that fortune teller is portrayed by Chorus Director Dr. Rachelle Woolston, whom Clair said deserved special recognition for her help behind the scenes in this production, as well as her work as a member of the cast.

“We have a wonderful cast,” Clair said. “They’re just great. I feel very blessed to have the level of talent that I have fitting all the parts as I envisioned them.”

When casting this show, Clair told The Reporter some actors agreed to be in the play before they even read a word of the script, likely because of the Clairs’ reputation as playwrights.

“And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? You don’t know – the script could be terrible. The songs could be terrible,’” Clair said. “But no, they took a leap of faith. The only reason why anybody dropped out was because one actor broke her nose, and one little boy had to have a tonsillectomy. But no one said, ‘Oh, well, this is a pile of crap’ and dropped out.”

After achieving success writing novels, poems and travelogues, Andersen became inspired by the fairy tales told to him as a youth. These stories such as The Emperor Wears No Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, and most recently, The Ice Queen better known today as Frozen, still delight children, adults, and the Walt Disney Company today.

Andersen: A Fairy Tale Life, will be presented by Indy Bardfest and Carmel Theatre Company. Go to bit.ly/afairytalelife or call (317) 410-9933 for tickets.