Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, The Old Vic, 103 The Cut, London SE1 to 28 October 2023.

3***: William Russell.

Having missed the press night as I was away I came to this midway through the run but without having read the reviews although it was hard to miss the posters with the four stars on them. It proved something of a disappointment. Both Bertie Carvel who plays Higgins and Patsy Ferran who plays Eliza are fine performers but the interplay between them as he transforms her from Cockney flower girl into a lady with impeccable speech – from cabbage leaf to duchess – lacks any chemistry. There is always a wish that it should end up with their living together happily ever after – although Shaw would have it that she ends up marrying and running a flower shop with Freddy Eynsford Hill, played here by Taheen Modak as a handsome but dim-witted lovelorn failing to hand over bouquest to her suitor. It is an interesting experiment the teacher and his bachelor friend, Michael Gould a rather colourless Colonel Pickering, taking her in and giving her elocution lessons – but to what end? What will become of her? She learns to speak well and to comport herself with style but what does that fir her for? In a way My Fair Lady has sabotaged the play – one keeps waiting for the songs or spotting where the lyricist seized on Shaw for inspiration – not helped because Carvel is giving us a rather petulant Rex Harrison as Higgins. He could go into the musical in a trice. Ferran’s cockney at the beginning is pretty awful and she plays up the clown like comedy of the learning to speak properly scenes but as the evening goes on she settles down and when she breaks free is hugely effective. Those slippers are not going to be given to Higgins in this version of the play.

It all takes place in some unspecified time, sometime one assumes in the 1930s given the music chosen to back the action and the taxi which trundles off and on several times. The updating works well and director Richard Jones keeps things moving at a frenetic pace. There is a nice tea party scene when Eliza utters the word bloody – one of the play’s great sensations – and Sylvestra Le Touzel, in spite of some ghastly clothes, is a sensible Mrs Higgins resigned to coping with her impossible son. It is interesting to see how the musical has sabotaged the play – Shaw’s Arms and the Man became The Chocolate Soldier and it did not happen to it although that was a different age. It has some weeks to run and for anyone who has not seen the play time to go. But as everyone scuttled about to the music or Higgins said he had grown accustomed to Eliza I did start to wish I could hear those songs.

Cast

Bertie Carvel – Henry Higgins.

Patsy Ferran - Eliza Doolittle.

Lizzy Connolly – Clara Eynsford Hill.

Grace Cookerey-Gam – Mrs Eynsford Hill.

Steven Dykes – Ensemble.

Michael Gould – Colonel Pickering.

Liz Jadav – Ensemble.

Penny Layden – Mrs Pearce.

Sylvestra Le Touzel – Mrs Higgins.

John Marquez – Alfred Doolittle.

Taheen Modak – Freddy Eynsfor Hill.

Caroline Moroney – Ensemble.

RohanRakit – Ensemble.

Kieran Smith – Aristid Kaparthy.

Creatives

Director – Richard Jones.

Set & Costume – Stewart Laing.

Lighting – Adam Silvermars.

Sound – Tony Gayle.

Composer & arranger – Will Stuart.

Movement – Sarah Fahle.

Dialect – William Connacher.

Voice – Charlie Hughes-D’Aeth.