PYGMALION
BY
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
DIRECTED
By
Jill Webster
8th, 9th, 10th, 11th December 2004
George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion in 1912 to breathe life into the dusty science of phonetics and to demonstrate how social barriers can be torn down by the power of words alone. Whereas the classical Pygmalion, a sculptor, prayed to Aphrodite to make his ideal statue come alive so that he could marry her, Shaw made Henry Higgins refuse to marry his transformed flower girl. His ambiguous ending has been challenged ever since by numerous productions and also by My Fair Lady, the musical based on the play. Pygmalion has been staged before by the Players, in 1974 when Peter Walker and David Nash took the lead roles.
CAST
in order of appearance
|
Clara Eynsford-Hill, a young girl |
Jennifer Burraston |
|
Freddy Eynsford-Hill, her brother |
Josef Wallace |
|
Mrs Eynsford-Hill, their mother |
Kate Britten |
|
Eliza Doolittle, a flowergirl |
Liz Cannon |
|
Colonel Pickering, an elderly gentleman |
Ken Fowler |
|
Henry Higgins, a middle-aged professor |
James Wallace |
|
Alfred Doolittle, a dustman |
Richard Burraston |
|
Mrs Higgins, Henry's mother |
Lonnie Christophers |
|
Mrs Pearce, Higgins' housekeeper |
Chris Euman |
|
Parlourmaid |
Sheila Webb |
|
Crowd |
Jon Beard, Norman Gaylor, Nichollas Heuston, Frank Hitchcock, Robert Pierson, Bethany Richmond, and Peter Walker |
PYGMALION BY BERNARD SHAW
Shoreham Village Hall, 8-11 December.
This is the second time that Shoreham Players have produced Pygmalion. The first was in 1974 and in the intervening 30 years they have also staged My Fair Lady, so the story obviously has appeal. Yet Shaw in general and Pygmalion in particular are difficult for amateur companies in the early 21st century. Shaw wrote plays to promote his programme of political and social reform and they rely heavily on two or three actors delivering long speeches setting out ideas which may have been radical in 1912 but are unsurprising in 2004.
Do the Shoreham Players have actors and a producer to meet this challenge and breathe fresh life into an aging drama? Last week they showed they have. Much of the credit must go to Liz Cannon as an extremely spirited Eliza Doolittle. The famous scene where she exits from Mrs Higgins’ ‘At Home’ with the line ‘not bloody likely’ is sheer delight. Liz alone was worth the price of the ticket, but she was ably supported by an insufferably arrogant Professor Higgins (James Wallace) and a charmingly paternalistic Colonel Pickering (Ken Fowler). Shaw did not leave much scope for the other parts, but Alfred Doolittle (Richard Burraston) was a very earthy dustman and Mrs Higgins (Lonnie Christophers) was very regal.
No company can transcend the limitations of the play and I don’t think Shaw ever worked out how to resolve the plot. He vigorously denied that there was any romantic engagement between Eliza and the Professor – it did not fit his feminist agenda – and that is how James Wallace played the Professor. But surely every audience longs for a hint that he is secretly fond of Eliza and I would have liked him to have had more difficulty in controlling his impulse to console her tears. Without a whiff of UST (unresolved sexual tension) Act V falls rather flat.
The actors are only the visible part of a great team effort. The producer, Jill Webster, showed herself well up to the high standard set by the Players in her very first production and in honouring the rest of her team she made especial mention of the woman who has painted the scenery for the Players for the past 53 years, Susan Platts. Understandably Susan is thinking of passing the baton to a younger villager. Let us hope she finds as good a pupil as Professor Higgins found in Eliza.
Edward James