Pygmalion - Chichester Festival 2010 (Review)
Review by David Munro
ALTHOUGH Pygmalion was first produced in April 1914 (at His Majesty’s Theatre with Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Mrs Patrick Campbell) the idea of gentrifying a cockney girl first came to Shaw in 1897, when “Mrs. Pat” was under contract to actor–manager Johnston Forbes-Robertson and at the height of her youthful fascination and glamour.
He finished the play in 1912 but, due to Mrs Pat’s health, production was shelved for two years.
The plot, as anyone who has viewed My Fair Lady will know, concerns a professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, who makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess by teaching her gentility and impeccable speech.
He succeeds and once he has achieved his objective has no more real use for Eliza. Shaw used the play to satirize the rigid British class system of the day and as a comment on women’s independence; a fashionable theme for the dramatists of the period.
Shaw never intended there to be any romantic attachment between Eliza and Higgins; he envisaged her as marrying Freddy Eynsford-Hill and opening a flower shop or greengrocer.
Gabriel Pascal, the producer of the film made in the ’30s, disagreed and a new ending was conceived, which hinted at a possible future romance between them.
Shaw is supposed to have approved this departure from his original intentions (he collaborated on the screenplay) although some doubt has been expressed as to the genuineness of his acquiescence.
Mrs Patrick Campbell, besides being a very beautiful woman, was also strong minded and self opinionated, who ended her life in Hollywood where she caused trouble; and frustrated the efforts of those who tried to salvage her career.
Shaw incorporated traits of her character into Eliza, which in the past has made her a difficult role for other actresses (it is said it even defeated Gertrude Lawrence; not only an actress with many of Mrs Pat’s characteristics but a cockney girl who “made good” and transformed herself into an elegant and sophisticated lady who, at times, betrayed her humble background and should have fitted the role perfectly!).
In the current production at Chichester, Honeysuckle Weeks makes a very valiant stab at the role and although she gives a strong and mainly effective performance she fails to transfer the fire and spirit of the cockney girl into the ladylike Eliza.
In her final scene with Higgins, where her frustration with him and what he has made her boils over, she made her despair and rage sound like an issue in a technical debate, wordy and wearisome rather than a pungent denunciation of him and his values and an affirmation of her rights.
It was, nonetheless, a good performance and until the final scene one that held the attention. She threw away the “bloody” remark, making it seem natural and in context rather than a piece of gratuitous rudery and her gauche attempts at social chit chat at Mrs Higgins’ tea party were funny and, in a way, touching.
Her body language, as she listens to Higgins and Pickering taking credit for her success at the ball, underlined her growing realisation of her position in the household and their lives and was most expressive.
Rupert Everett was a cantankerous, self opinionated Higgins and made his treatment and dismissal of Eliza totally credible.
One felt that Eliza was well quit of him and there was certainly no thought of romance between them so far as he was concerned.
He swiftly dispelled all memories of the cuddly Rex Harrison Higgins in My Fair Lady; this was Shavian Higgins through and through with just enough charm to make his disdainful treatment of Eliza marginally less objectionable.
It was not until the very end did he begin to realise what he had done to her and Everett’s belated awakening to this fact made good sense in the context of his performance as a whole.
Peter Eyre made a character out of Colonel Pickering just short of a caricature of a blimpish colonial officer. His impersonal interest in Eliza as the subject of a bet and his slightly cavalier attitude toward her was wholly believable in Eyre’s performance.
Humanity and understanding were the watch-words of Stephanie Cole’s delightful Mrs Higgins. Her exasperation at her son’s behaviour and her acceptance of Eliza brought some warmth into this really rather heartless play, and although the role is not a big one, Miss Cole made it memorable.
The Eynsford–Hill family are set up by Shaw as the unpleasant representatives of a social class for which he clearly had no use. As played by Candida Benson, Marty Cruickshank and Peter Sandys-Clarke, the author was served well by their snobbery and insincerity; not nice people but good performances though.
I was not so happy, though, with Phil Davis’ Alfred Doolittle. Although he clearly played the character that Shaw intended – a venal man with no real love for his daughter – I thought this performance was a little too heartless and unpleasant and struck a peculiarly unpleasant note, which perhaps is what the author and the director Philip Prowse intended.
After the saccharine of My Fair Lady, it is interesting to view the original again and this production is a good one for that purpose.
Philip Prowse’s direction moves the drama at a pace which carries one along without giving a chance to realise at the time the imperfections of the play itself.
The cast are good and manage the large expanse of the apron stage of the Chichester theatre to give an impression of intimacy, making the evening an enjoyable one. Like him or not, Shaw was a good dramatist and this production makes that very clear.
Although one may wish for a happy ending, Mr Everett and Miss Weeks’ compelling performances and this excellent production make it plain Shaw was right in the end.
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Director – Philip Prowse
Designer – Philip Prowse
Lighting Designer – Gerry Jenkinson
CAST: Candida Benson; Rebecca Birch; Suzie Blake; Stephanie Cole; Marty Cruickshank; Phil Davis; Freya Dominic; Rupert Everett; Peter Eyre; Brendan Hooper; Peter Sandys-Clarke; Honeysuckle Weeks; Tristram Wymark.
Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6AP.
In repertory: July 9 – August 27, 2010
Evenings 7.30pm/Matinees Thurs. & Sat: 2pm
Box Office: 01234 781312.