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| Vaishnavi Sharma, Eric Tucker, James Patrick Nelson, Grace Bernardo & Edmund Lewis in Bedlam's "Pygmalion" (photo: Nile Scott Studios) |
Ever since George Bernard Shaw's 1913 comedy Pygmalion
(now being performed at Cambridge's Central Square Theater by
the New York company known as Bedlam, presented by Underground Railway Theater) was transformed by the team of
Lerner and Loewe into their 1956 musical megahit My Fair Lady
(successfully transformed yet again in the 1964 film version), it
has become challenging to attend any staged performance of Shaw's
original work without “hearing” a cue for a song. The story and
the musical score are forever bound up in our collective memory, as
is the romanticized happy ending (at least for the male lead) that
was the musical's most significant alteration from Shaw. In this
riotous production from Bedlam (who graced the local stage scene in
recent seasons with their presentations of Saint Joan and
Sense and Sensibility), all of the Shavian wit and wisdom
remain intact.
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| Vaishnavi Sharma & Eric Tucker in Bedlam's "Pygmalion" (photo: Nile Scott Studios) |
Yet with a few changes, and the choice to cast the role
of Eliza Doolittle as a young woman from Delhi (Vaishnavi Sharma),
Bedlam has introduced new levels of conflict and interest. There
remains the issue of the bullying and misogynistic condescension and
petulance of phoneticist Henry Higgins (Eric Tucker, also the
wondrous and versatile Director and Sound Designer of this
production), but Higgins is what he is, a snob unwilling to admit his
affection for his “creation”. Shaw's play is indebted to the
Cinderella fable on the one hand, and the realism of Ibsen's
treatments of middle-class life on the other. As Eliza, Sharma is a
comic gem, and the perfectly pompous Tucker is her perfectly
imperfect foil, whereas Colonel Pickering (James Patrick Nelson, also
playing Mrs. Eynsford-Hill) conveys his avuncular championship of
Eliza, and her father Alfred P. Dolittle (Michael Dwan Singh) bemoans
middle class morality. Also in the cast, in multiple roles, are
housekeeper Mrs. Pearce (Grace Bernardo, who also plays Clara
Eynsford-Hill, and a parlor maid), and Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Edmund
Lewis, also hysterically portraying Mrs. Higgins). They are all at
their funniest when rapidly switching roles and hats. The creative
contributions include Costumes by Charlotte Palmer-Lane, Lighting by
Les Dickert, and Scenic Design by Joseph Stallone and Elizabeth
Rocha.
Whereas the film version of the musical portrayed
Eliza's roots as being exposed in the Ascot scene (“Come on Dover,
move yer bloomin' arse!”), Pygmalion does so at a garden
party where, when asked if she's going to walk, she declaims, in
pluperfectly elegant diction: “Not bloody likely! I am going in a
taxi!”. If Shaw were to attend the current Broadway production of
the musical version (at Lincoln Center), he would doubtless be
pleased to hear how his female lead has regained the upper hand as,
rather than fetch his slippers, she throws them at him and storms
triumphantly out of the theater, faithful to Shaw's original
intent. In the final scene of the 1956 staged My Fair Lady,
Higgins bellows “Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers!”,
after which she is described in the script: “with tears in her
eyes, she understands”. In Pygmalion, on the other hand,
rather than restoring her role as slipper-fetcher, she is the one to
bellow “what you are to do without me I cannot imagine” and then
“she sweeps out”. In microcosm, Shaw here demonstrates whose
story this is, who has become confident, determined and independent.
It is Eliza who understands that it is Pickering who proves to be the
true gentleman of class, having treated her as a lady long before she
became one. As Shaw once wrote, art can never be anything but
didactic; this play is more about class distinctions than speech.
Bravo, Bedlam, you've done it yet again.
And would Shaw take umbrage with the minor little
changes to the script, given our modern day issues of immigration and
wall-obsessed hysteria?
Not bloody likely.
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