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Fine words
to
make a fair lady
Mrs Higgins (Rula Lenska) and her son Henry (Alistair McGowan) Pygmalion
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
*****
‘A MAN will tell you nothing until you contradict him.’ My favourite
Shaw quote popped into my head at Pygmalion last night. The story, probably thanks to
Lerner and Lowe, is familiar and far from rickety and arthritic. Svengali figure, Professor
Henry Higgins (Alistair McGowan), a world-renowned teacher of phonetics,
meets Eliza Doolittle (Rachel Barry), ‘a good girl’ and bets his
companion Colonel Pickering (Paul Brightwell), an expert in Indian
dialects, that he can teach her to speak like a duchess within six
months. Henry’s mother Mrs Higgins (Rula
Lenska), housekeeper Mrs Pearce (Charlotte Page) and Eliza’s dustman
father Alfred Doolittle (Jamie Foreman) can all see that the
‘experiment’ is fundamentally life-changing for Eliza. Henry Higgins
might teach Eliza to speak like a lady but changing her manners to suit
the new class to which she will belong is a much bigger job, and one in
which Henry Higgins has no chance of success because he doesn’t possess
them himself. It is, as Shaw is wont, a diatribe on class. Eliza is respectable poor and
proud of it; she works for herself selling flowers outside the opera at
Covent Garden. When she finds her new ‘voice’ she is more limited,
marriage is her only ‘respectable’ option. The play moves inexorably
towards its denouement as Eliza sees for herself the repercussions of
the ‘experiment’ and tells Higgins where to get off. It is both an
analogy for parent/child and teacher/pupil relationship. There is a
power tipping point and Eliza’s turns her into a far better person than
Henry Higgins will ever be. It is she who contradicts him and we learn a
lot about his foibles and inadequacies. A veritable constellation on
stage delivers a first-rate, faultless performance. Alistair McGowan is
built for Shaw. His wonderfully expressive, lightning comedy movements
reach the underlying Higgins. I particularly liked the part where
perched on a settee between Mrs (Jane Lambert) and Clara Eynsford-Hill
(Anna O’Grady) at his mother’s ‘at home’ he wiggled his way to a little
extra room. Alfred Doolittle’s speech about middle-class morality is
wonderful. Delivered without a trace of malice but barrel-loads of
self-pity, he sums up the ambiguities of Victorian morals So why revive this play? What
does it have to say to us? Shaw is sadly missed for his unerring ability
to search out cant, greed, immorality, misery, avarice and the plethora
of timeless urges that define our darker side. As both Doolittles step
from one class to another there’s no going back. It’s a lesson for life.
Directed by David Grindley, Pygmalion runs to 17-05-14. Jane Howard
12-05-14
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