Pygmalion

Pygmalion
By George Bernard Shaw. Sydney Theatre Company. Sydney Theatre. Director: Peter Evens. 4 February – 3 March, 2012.

After 50 years of the comfortable, tuneful, overdressed My Fair Lady who would have thought there’d still be such energy, laughter and stinging relevance in Shaw’s mighty original? Peter Evens’ STC production is a revelation, and the packed opening night audience rattled the rafters in appreciation.

With virtually no set — the huge stage is open to the wings and flies — and modern-dress costumes and props that deliberately clash with Shaw’s unchanged 1912 text, Evens and his actors triumphantly reclaim the wise old bird’s comic theatricality. The first half, in particular, gets huge laughs: the new-look, new-sounding Eliza’s first afternoon tea party with confused Mrs Eynsford Hill and her two upper-class-twit children is marvellously funny.

Deprogramming our inbuilt memories of Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in the leading roles, the Eliza of Andrea Demetriades and the Higgins of Marco Chiappi are splendidly fresh and believable. She starts drenched and bedraggled (“squashed cabbage leaves from Covent Garden”) and is convincingly moulded into high-class respectability. He prowls the stage eccentrically, a grown-up boy with masses of unkempt curls, a GBS substitute who must speak the truth no matter what the cost. Unlike in the musical, this couple are doomed to remain at war.

The supporting cast are also fine. Deborah Kennedy is sharply disapproving as a Scottish Mrs Pearce; Kim Gyngell is warmly helpless as Colonel Pickering; David Woods gives Eliza’s philosopher/dustman father a dark, abusive edge.

The acres of empty stage bring some sound problems when the actors move too far upstage, and there’s some hardly necessary video input on a flown-in screen. But this is a terrific production that reclaims Shaw’s great comic masterpiece from its long Broadway kidnap.

Frank Hatherley 

Images (from top): Andrea Demetriades and Marco Chiappi; Andrea Demetriades; KimGyngell, Andrea Demetriades and Marco Chiappi; David Woods and Kim Gyngell; Andrea Demetriades and Marco Chiappi & Marco Chiappi  in STC’s Pygmalion. Photographer: Brett Boardman.

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