July 30 1997
July 30 1997
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Pygmalion=20
Albery, London WC2=20
It is not the most obvious recipe for West End success.
Before the farceur Ray Cooney took artistic control, this
production lost two directors, three if you count Roy
Marsden, who was also playing Henry Higgins and at one
point hoped to do for Shaw's play what he was supposed to
do for Eliza Doolittle. It also lost its female lead, the unknown
Carli Norris coming on as substitute for Emily Lloyd.=20
At times Bill Kenwright, the producer, must have felt he had
lost everything except his shirt =AD and maybe he wondered if
that garment was securely fixed to his torso.=20
But the news from the Albery is far from bad. This is not an
exciting revival, but it is perfectly competent and, to the credit
of that daisy-chain of directors, less showy than the
National's Pygmalion of a few years ago. There are one or
two unexpected accretions, including a polka for Eliza and
Moray Watson's affable, bumbling Pickering. But there are
no lingering walks through late-night London, no soupy ballet
beneath Big Ben. Christopher Woods has designed a blend
of columns and iron walkways that, with the help of film
projections, passes muster as Covent Garden, Higgins's
library, even a London embassy. It is a simple, serviceable
structure unlikely to overshadow any principals.=20
Nor are the principals overshadowed by anything except,
occasionally, their own limitations. Norris is not hugely
plausible as the flower-girl who wails
"ah-ah-oh-ow-ow-ow-oo" when worried; but that is a failing
she shares with every Eliza I've seen, not least Audrey
Hepburn in the movie of My Fair Lady. She misses the blend
of wariness, pluck, cunning and proletarian energy that would
allow us to feel she loses as much as she gains by becoming a
lady. But she is deliciously funny in the famous scene at
Mama Higgins's tea, when she says all the wrong things in
absolutely the right accent, and touchingly dignified in the last
scenes, when she must twig the true superficiality of her
accomplishments.=20
A certain energy also eludes Marsden's Higgins. He plays the
character as a genial narcissist, too self-absorbed to care if he
scratches himself, fidgets, and generally plays the overgrown
child at social gatherings. The interpretation is fine as far as it
goes; but Higgins's restlessness is supposed to have its
up-side, too. Shaw describes him in a stage direction as
"robust and vital", and even tries to identify him with the
hungry, questing evolutionary spirit he rather irritatingly called
the "life-force".=20
Well, Marsden's triumphant wriggles and gleeful gurgles don't
tally with my idea of the Lamarckian superman of English
phonetics or the iconoclastic enemy of the British class
system. They don't even prepare us for the Higgins who
exults when Eliza progresses from a self-pitying "lady" to a
woman capable of sticking up for herself =AD but, again, how
often has an actor brought that much spirit and vision to the
role?=20
One performance I would not wish different. Michael Elphick
plays Alfred Doolittle, dustman and philosopher, as a canny
old troll blinking in disbelief at his sudden elevation from the
ranks of the undeserving poor to those of the
pink-waistcoated middle classes.=20
I bet there are lottery winners like him today: flummoxed,
unhappy, and powerless to resist the finger of fate.=20
BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE=20
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