Review - Pygmalion - People's Theatre

Pygmalion 

People's Theatre 
18th March 2025

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion has been showing at The People's Theatre this week and by all accounts has been wowing the audiences every night. We attended on the opening night and I admit to a slight trepidation. Although I know of Pygmalion, my only experience of it is as the musical adaptation, My Fair Lady. Would I be able to watch the play without wanting to burst into song at key moments? Or would the musical be so far removed from the original play that it be barely recognizable? 

I need not have worried - the musical version has stuck pretty closely to the original, and the People's team have, as usual, staged a first class production! Jake Wilson Craw plays Professor Higgins, in all his insufferable, self-importance and flamboyance. Jim Boylan balances him out with as the polite, gentlemanly Captain Pickering. Both of course get carried away with their own enthusiasms for speech and language, which manifest as the childish glee with which they undertake their experiment to transform Eliza. And then we have Eliza! Daisy Burden performs the vocal equivalent of a hundred metre dash with every sentence she utters - the words tumble out of her mouth at such a rate as she strangles ( Professor Higgins would say) the Queen's English selling her flowers and inveigling small change from the passers by. As Higgins berates her, and discusses her mangling of the language with Captain Pickering, we can see Eliza watching and listening and Daisy Burden manages to convey through her facial expression and posture that she is listening and taking in - if not all - then a goodly amount of what they are saying. Eliza Doolittle may be uneducated, but she is not stupid. She is streetwise, and being her father's daughter, she knows how to use a situation to her advantage. 

She transforms under the bullying guidance of the professor into a refined, well spoken lady. The men, of course, take all the credit and Eliza is given none. This leads to the climactic final scenes when she confronts Higgins, she having perfectly understood the social dilemma she is now in, while the professor, for all his education can not. The play raises issues of a woman's place in society, and the problems inherent in rising above her station, as well as the major issue of an unmarried woman accepting the help and support of a man. As a street seller it was assumed she was selling more than flowers; as a pupil of the professor, living in his house, it was assumed she must giving "favours" in return. Eliza comes to realise that the only way for her to survive is to be married. 

Eliza learns much more from Professor Higgins' experiment than how to talk and behave like a lady, and she learns much more from it than the Professor. The ending of Pygmalion is much stronger than that of it's musical twin and is the better for it - Eliza is triumphant, as she has always been, but now she knows it, while the professor still has not grasped his own lesson! 

The play itself poses some challenges for the crew. It is set in various locations from London streets, to various rooms within the homes of Professor Higgins and his mother. It begins in Covent Garden, which is simply portrayed with a sign and boards plastered with posters, behind two objects suggesting market barrows. When the scene changes, the boards at the back are swiftly and smoothly turned to create a living room, the covers on the barrows are twitched away to reveal a chaise-long and a settee. Similarly, the boards turn to reveal a bathroom. Members of the cast bring on or remove props for each scene adding in the various touches to transform the scene. 

This has been beautifully produced and was a joy to watch.  

Information on the rest of the season - the next production will be Goodnight Mister Tom - is available at www.peoplestheatre.co.uk

*images by Paul Hood

Denise Sparrowhawk