It doesn’t seem like an alluring choice for a comeback, but Chris Goldfarb has nurtured a desire to play the title role in “The Elephant Man” for a long time.

That makes the need to contort his body and distort his voice to play John Merrick worth taking on for the 32-year-old actor, who has been away from local stages for four years.

Interviewed early in the rehearsal process, Goldfarb still seemed amazed he’d landed the role in the Indianapolis Civic Theatre production, which opens next weekend. The 1979 Broadway production won two Tonys and a Drama Desk Award.

Prosthetics and makeup are not part of the stage role, though the 1980 movie with John Hurt may lead to expectations of something visually repellent to resemble the disfiguring growths that made the real “elephant man” an object of horror and fascination in Victorian England.

“It doesn’t compare at all with anything I’ve done before,” said Goldfarb. His previous favorite roles with Civic were in the comedies “Lend Me a Tenor” and “The Nerd.”

Besides the uncomfortable physical positions and the voice challenges, Goldfarb said: “I need to keep the audience with me. . . . Audience members don’t want to struggle to understand,” yet the role calls for Merrick to come across as off-putting vocally as well as physically.

“It’s far more difficult for the character than for the physical position,” Goldfarb said. In fact, in rehearsal he has been using his discomfort to help him “get inside” Merrick. He has also read about the real man afflicted with Proteus syndrome, Joseph Merrick (1862-1890), so he could develop his characterization "from the inside out. . . . I try to understand what it must have been like for him.

“There is evidence he was intelligent,” Goldfarb added, which fits the character created by playwright Bernard Pomerance. "He had a romantic imagination, though he never had experience with the opposite sex. He loved, though people didn’t love him back.

“He wasn’t too arrogant about his intelligence, but in the play he makes too much sense to other people. They’re supposed to teach him what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate, but people get frustrated because he makes more sense than they do.”

Goldfarb, a married father of a 1-year-old son, works in marketing for the Indianapolis Indians. Work and family demands made stepping away from theater sensible for a while. But ever since he saw the movie version of “The Elephant Man” at age 6, he’s nurtured a fascination with the story of Merrick, who lived a short, unhappy life burdened with a rare deformity.

“It’s a great story that needs to be told. People need to see it, and I hope they like the way we’re going to do it.”