Shaw's 'Pygmalion': Sparkle and Shade

The first thing any Shavian will probably tell you about Pygmalion is not to think of it as the non-musical version of My Fair Lady. That's the alias by which it's most commonly recognized, which is not at all to its discredit: few more delightful musicals have ever been written. But what the romantic aura of the Broadway adaptation obscures, and what the new Lyric Stage production generally succeeds in conveying, is the darker, harder-edged quality that persists beneath all the sparkle.

This duality is brought out with all the more force in the "simple-stage" version of the play, which is as it was originally written, and as the Lyric Stage, not surprisingly, chooses to present it. In this pared-down form (Shaw himself later added material for cinematic purposes), we don't see Eliza actually learning to speak; we don't see her triumph at the Embassy reception; we don't see Higgins' nominal rival, Freddy, at all after the third act. What we do see are the progressive stages of the awakening of a human being, measured against the stubbornly static position of her awakener.

Pygmalion is on one level a lightly speculative exercise on social mobility and the potential of human education-the idea that even a flower girl can be transformed into a lady by learning to speak and dress like one. And on this level, the play is a joy to watch, grounding the fairy tale quality of the story with gloriously Shavian wit. But as a drama of human relations, it's much more frustrating and far less palatable than many of the playwright's other works (the fourth act, when done with enough punch, is one of the most brutally painful scenes Shaw ever wrote). As a mentor figure, Henry Higgins is less like the savvy, kindly Caesars and Captain Bluntschlis and more akin to another recurring type of Shavian male protagonist: the loquacious, self-enamored big baby who needs to learn, not teach. However, unlike Jack Tanner and Reverend Morell, Higgins learns nothing, ultimately rejecting the woman's efforts to lead him out of his narcissistic universe into the real world of male-female relations. And therein lies the tragedy: Higgins' experiment is a brilliant success as far as Eliza is concerned, but for himself, an utter failure-though he'll never admit it.

Robert J. Bouffier and Susan McConnell, in the central roles, begin a little flatly. In Shaw's wonderful opening scene, they seem to be merely reciting their lines, without really savoring them. But they soon warm to their work, so that the final two acts carry all or most of the zing Shaw wrote into them. This is owing more to McConnell, who makes a convincing transition from querulous selfconsciousness to defiant independence. Bouffier's a little too wooden-faced (a kind of Bob Dole for the stage), and doesn't quite tap into the semi-tragic nature of his character's self-imprisonment, though the contrast still comes through starkly enough when juxtaposed with Eliza's growing self-awareness. Ron Ritchell, as a rather subdued, Dr. Watsonish Colonel Pickering, unfortunately comes off as a gentler but paler copy of Higgins.

The rest of the cast, free of the tensions and ambivalence of the two principal characters, do an excellent job presenting the purely comic elements with which Pygmalion abounds. Michael Bradshaw is first-class as that eloquent spokesman for "the undeserving poor," Alfred Doolittle; Eve Johnson cuts a superbly commanding matriarchal figure as the noble Mrs. Higgins; while Alice Duffy strides with majestic aplomb as Mrs. Pearce, Higgins' unflappable housekeeper.

In the gut-bustingly hilarious third act in which Eliza makes her first appearance in genteel society, Mary Klug and Celeste McClain add to the laugh quota as the dresden-china gentlewoman Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and her would-be-fashionable daughter Clara, while Neil McGarry plays an appropriately pop-eyed Freddy, Eliza's fatuous suitor. This scene-Shavian social comedy at its greatest-is probably the best of the entire production, though McConnell mugs a little too hard as the half-finished creation.

The Lyric Stage makes the most of its intimate space, employing a simple all-purpose set design and a few well-chosen props. A particularly inspired touch is the inscription on the backdrop of the three major settings of the play-Covent Garden (where Higgins and Eliza first meet), Wimpole Street (Higgins' house), and Earlscourt (Mrs. Higgins' residence)-in phonetic spellings, lighted to show the location of the scene at hand. Less well-conceived are the two step-dancers who serve to bridge the scene changes; they end up looking rather silly and out of place amid the shifting props.

Despite the folly of comparing Pygmalion with its musical offspring, one can't help but recall, a little wistfully, the incomparable inflections of the great Rex Harrison and the riotously funny phonetics lessons (which Shaw either wrote in later or should have written). Nonetheless, the Lyric Stage production does succeed in capturing both the delicious comic shimmer and the essentially problematic nature of Shaw's best-known play.