Pygmalion

‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw has had many incarnations since it was written in 1912. Probably best known are Lerner and Loewe’s Musical ‘My Fair Lady’(1956), the Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison film adaptation (1964) and thirty years later, the businessman meets sex-worker version, ‘Pretty Woman’ (1990). But I did wonder how Richard Jones would work with the original story of an old professor plucking an ignorant flower girl from the streets and training her to speak like a Duchess, for today’s audience.

Somewhat miraculously, and without any major re-writes, Jones’ production starring Patsy Ferran as the irrepressible Eliza Doolittle and Bertie Carvel as the obstreperous Henry Higgins reaches across the century to our own concerns about gender, power and consent. At times this witty, character driven drama feels like a serious forum for current debates.

Stewart Laing’s set design is geometric and cool with Professor Higgins phonetic experiment taking place in something closer to a brightly lit laboratory than a Victorian, panelled study. The famous opening scene where the Professor meets Eliza selling flowers in the pouring rain beneath the portico of St Pauls’ Church in Covent Garden is self-consciously replicated, with a giant triangle and cylinders for the pillars flying in to complete the famous frontage and everyone shouting very loudly to be heard over the rain. It feels like we are witnessing a historical extraction before our own examination begins.

Back inside Higgins laboratory, his house-keeper (Penny Layden) and the gentlemanly Colonol Pickering (Michael Gould) fight vehemently for Eliza to have a fair contract whilst Ferran and Carvel begin to flex their comic muscles. Ferran’s poise is glorious when she is first presented to society at Higgins mothers ‘at home’ tea, accidently starting a trend for a ‘new small talk’ with her immaculate pronunciation of entirely inappropriate stories about her gin-soaked aunt being ‘done in’ by a relative after her straw hat.

Both central performances are larger than life at first but grow in conviction and pathos. As Eliza’s education gives her new power, Higgins ultimately seems fragile, an outsider in his world where conforming to social norms is everything. It turns out I needn’t have worried about the relevance of Pygmalion today – not only does George Bernard Shaw’s original play provides rich material for contemporary debates on consent, gender and power but the cast of characters, with exceptional performances across the board, remain poignant and all too familiar today.

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan