Liberty Lyceum Travel

We’ve been out to the theater again! We were excited to see that “Pygmalion” was playing here because Miss C knows “My Fair Lady,” the musical based on it, so well. At her voice recital last June, she gave a great rendition of “Just You Wait,” convincingly warning ‘enry ‘iggins of his fate.

It also seemed extremely appropriate to see George Bernard Shaw’s satire on social classes and the English language while we are in London. Professor of “phonetics” Henry Higgins, in the play, has a habit of naming the neighborhood of London a person hails from, claiming he can do so “within two streets,” based solely on the person’s speech. When he names “Hoxton” and Eliza says she sells flowers at “Tottenham Court Road,” we now know where those places are. And even though London is very different now than in 1912, when Shaw published the play, we’ve delighted at all the different “British” accents we’ve heard around town, and wondered why “Saint” Pancras is pronounced “Sint” or even “Snt” (with hardly a vowel sound) when we hear that station announced on the tube. We were all for enjoying some fun with the language, in a classic play set in London.

The play stars Rupert Everett (whom we had seen in “Blithe Spirit” on Broadway last year) and Kara Tointon. Higgins’ mother is played charmingly by Diana Rigg. All were wonderful, and it was a joy to see in the beautiful Victorian theater on the West End, the Garrick Theatre, named for eighteenth century Shakespearean actor David Garrick. What really surprised us, given our familiarity with the musical “My Fair Lady,” was that the play has much more scintillating dialogue. Although many of Henry’s and Eliza’s best lines are indeed used in the musical, each has much more to say in the play, in a dynamic and compelling way that has one hanging on every word.

Even more surprising was how much stronger and more independent, especially toward the end, Eliza is in the play than in the musical. Shaw was an advocate of the working class, and this play was written when the suffragette movement was going strong in England. We especially appreciated how he had Eliza say that after a woman is turned into a “lady,” she is no longer fit for any kind of work, and she also protests that marrying (to support herself) is like selling herself, and that “we were above that on Tottenham Court Road.” It’s really a proto-feminist position, and it’s a shame that the musical “watered her down” so much, having her go back to the abusive Henry Higgins in the end. We’re really glad we saw “Pygmalion” and experienced Shaw’s original intent.