The cast shines in this revival which slightly missed the mark

Patsy Ferran and Bertie Carvel star in the revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, a play written in 1912, a classic tale of rags to riches, familiar to us, having inspired films such as My Fair Lady and Pretty Woman. Pygmalion follows the transformation of Eliza Doolittle (Patsy Ferran), from a working-class girl, selling flowers in Covent Garden, into a refined, presentable “lady”. Eliza’s story begins with her meeting the phonetics professor Henry Higgins (Bertie Carvel) and Colonel Pickering (Michael Gould). Higgins makes a bet with Pickering that through training and speech lessons, he could replace Eliza’s cockney accent and blasphemous language, with the speech and mannerisms of a high-class lady, and pass her off as a duchess in high society. Eliza is transformed and suddenly a new world is opened up to her; various parties, social opportunities, and romantic interests. As expected, this big change has its consequences, and as we follow the effects of Eliza’s new social status, we also observe the changing relationship between Eliza and Higgins, leading to questions concerning class, identity and power.

Now this is a classic story with predictable lessons on morality and social mobility, and it is a play which is over a hundred years old. Why Pygmalion? And what’s the actual relevance of it today? Directed by Richard Jones, the revival of Pgymalion, showing at The Old Vic, is an interesting move and I can imagine, to re-stage such a text must have been no mean feat. The world has changed majorly since 1912 and the play’s jokes, for example, take on a new irony in their 2023 context. Most of the jokes, and the text overall, is deeply misogynistic, something which Jones clearly plays around with. I guess while a lot of things has changed since 1912, some things have stayed the same, and maybe that’s the reason for the revival. There are still countless times when men take advantage of, or use their power to manipulate women; this is still commonplace in our society. So, the play’s explorations of gender relations may still be relevant, but what about class? Someone with a cockney accent or a regional dialect can still face discrimination today – ‘accent bias’ it’s called. Or especially if you have moved to the UK from another country, and English isn’t your native language. This is something which is explored in Pygmalion, but are all of these justifiable reasons enough for its revival? The social issues exposed by Pygmalion were just exposed even more by Jones, not through subtlety, but through over-acting and the camp performances of the cast; and is this the right way to go about reviving an old work? There was nothing particularly fresh about it, nothing new, or experimental. Now, I don’t think a play necessarily has to be any of these things to be considered good, however, doing something old and slightly fusty, such as Pygmalion, things need to be different. And I’m not sure exaggeration works here. It just meant the core and heart of the play gets slightly overlooked.

It also would have been better pulled off if the set were different. Everything felt off to me; the costume choices felt wrong and I failed to understand the pre-fab looking set. The moving colonnaded building felt a bit cringe-worthy, a long with the cardboard taxi. Things felt a bit inconsistent and messy, with a lot of styles and references chucked into one production. I think maybe the space was too big and the performances might have benefited from more intimate staging. Despite this, there were moments which I loved. The use of the spotlight during the rigorous vocal lessons Eliza was put through was fun and added to the comedic franticness of it, and the scene in which Eliza and Higgins argue after the Ambassador’s party was brilliant. The fire burning before them and the simple velvet curtains behind them, with minimal furniture, were all perfect choices, and elevated that scene which was a truly great example of the chemistry between Ferran and Carvel as well as their own individual acting skills. This is where the production shines – in the performances of Ferran and Carvel. Carvel played Higgins with such sliminess, giving, in the best way possible, a pathetic and uncomfortable performance which was so engrossing. Ferran was equally impressive, and was able to veer the play away from points at which it felt like a pantomime. The rest of the cast were also brilliant, so I would recommend seeing Pygmalion for the performances, as well as the jokes, which definitely got a few laughs, however, it’s still not enough to bring Shaw’s work truly to life.