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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Pygmalion
Highbury Theatre Centre
**** IT’S 102 years this month since George
Bernard Shaw’s Professor Higgins first stepped on the London stage to
turn Eliza into a lady, and a century on what a splendidly entertaining
Pygmalion has been served up by the Highbury Players. It is lively, witty and, perhaps a tribute to
Shaw’s masterful writing, not in the least bit dated. Ken Agnew excels
as the cantankerous Professor Henry Higgins, a confirmed bachelor - in
the literal rather than euphemistic sense I should perhaps quickly add –
an expert in phonetics who can tell you where you are from, and no doubt
inside leg measurement and mother’s maiden name, merely from hearing you
speak. Agnew’s Higgins has a permanently pained
expression and shows inexhaustible exasperation at the stupidity and
boorishness of the world around him. He seems most content with Colonel Pickering, an
expert on Indian dialects recently returned from the sub-continent and
played with delightful old world charm by Rob Alexander. Higgins can see
a fellow language expert as something relatively close to being almost
an equal., Higgins, whose manners are, should be say,
eccentric, is kept in check by the two women in his life, his long
suffering housekeeper Mrs Pearce, played with an air of quiet resign Then into their cosy if unconventional life comes Eliza Doolittle, a lovely performance by Liz Adnitt. The language experts do not exactly embrace her but see her as more of an experiment and decide on a wager to see if Higgins can turn this common guttersnipe into a lady who can be passed off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party in six months time. The excellent Liz Adnitt as Eliza Doolittle Eliza is a fun challenge to any actor because it is essentially three parts and Adnitt manages all three seamlessly and with consierable aplomb. First we have the cockney flower seller with words tumbling out so fast there is no time for grammar or aitches, with screams substituting for exclamations or protestations and anything said to her treated with hostility and suspicion while it is digested. Then we have Eliza as the half lady at Mrs
Higgins’ at home day, entertaining Mrs Eynsford-Hill, played in homely
style by Val Goode, her daughter Clara played in haughty fashion by
Georgia Green, and the splendidly love smitten Freddy played by Jack
Hobbis. Eliza has the elocution to pass as a lady, if a little slow and deliberate . . . but she has the grammar and vocabulary what shows what she is not no fine lady yet, no Lord love a duck. It is a sort of how now brown cow patois passed off by Higgins as the very latest in small talk. The the fact it is accepted as such, as a new fashion, is all part of Shaw's purpose of writing the play in the first place, apart from money of course, as a satire on the social mores and rigid class system of late Victorian and Edwardian England. Finally we have the finished article, Eliza as
the duchess, or is it the Hungarian princess, well spoken, articulate
and able to express herself quite forcibly – which delights Higgins in
his peculiar sort of way. You are never quite sure whether he is
delighted with the success of what he sees as his creation rather like
some sort of drawing room Dr Frankenstein, or whether he has actually,
God forbid, discovered something approaching affection or even, whisper
it quietly . . . love for the girl. Shaw was adamant no such thing would happen and
left his Higgins laughing at the ridiculousness of Eliza contemplating
marriage to Freddy. Yet producers and the public wanted a happy ending with at the very least a hint of marriage in the air, as in My Fair Lady, a favourite musical and film for many and probably the best known version of the original play, albeit the singalong version. Yet even in the original, seen here, you are left with the thought that Higgins, for all his bluster, wearing his confirmed bachelor status as a badge of honour, is not going to survive without his Eliza any more. We are left with an unlikely love story and an end we will never know - although the romantic in us is sure their futures are locked together. Scattered among the leads we have support from
the likes of Alfred Doolittle, dustman and Eliza,s father, played by
Peter Cooley. Alfred is an expert on the deserving poor, such as the
widowed, simple minded, infirm and legless, literally, and the
undeserving poor such as the legless, liquidly, feckless and
congenitally bone idle and he is proud to be among the latter with a
mission in life to tap up those of sufficient means, such as Pref
Higgins, to sustain his underserving existence. Then there is Higgins’ earlier pupil Nepommuck,
played again by Jack Hobbis – not that you would have known without
looking in the programme. He is Hungarian and speaks 32 languages,
including a variation of English well suited to selling Cornettos and,
unwittingly, confirms to Higgins that his experiment, wager, call it
what you will with Eliza has been a stunning success. And that is the crux of the whole matter. Was he
doing it for her or for his ego? Is she a completed project to be
discarded, or one to keep and cherish? We are never really sure and
before we can decide Shaw calls down the curtain and leaves us in
mid-air. The costumes are nicely of the period, helping to
set the scene well and director Ian Appleby has done a fine job making
extended scene changes look interesting with a fussy support cast of
extras appearing to rearrange the furniture to be just right rather than
leave an empty stage – with the duration of furniture moving presumably
dependent upon the speed main characters can change from evening to day
wear and back again. It is not the easiest of plays to stage – Shaw
acknowledged that in the first production – with five acts and half a
dozen scenes and Malcolm Robertshaw has kept the flexible set simple
with a few orange crates for an opening in Covent garden and a
collection of rearranged chairs for the rest. Jolly music of the time from Palm Court trios to
a banjo band fill in scene changes, one snippet sounded almost like The
Lancers, evoking visions of Mr Pastry – if you have never seen that look
it up on YouTube. There are a couple of times when wit stalls so it
could do with an injection of pace, or at least being nudged along a bit
but any hesitancy will no doubt vanish as the two week run progresses.
All in all though a most entertaining evening. To 30-04-16 Roger Clarke 20-04-16 |
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ation
by Rosemary Manjunath, and his mother, Mrs Higgins, played with an air
of mild exasperation, by Sandra Haynes.