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Phil Hopkins
Group Travel Editor & Theatre Correspondent
@philhopkinsuk
3:25 PM 2nd April 2014
arts

Pygmalion - An Eyeglass On The Idle Rich

 
Pygmalian Rula Lenska (Mrs Higgins), Alistair McGowan (Professor Higgins), photo copyright Manuel Harlan
Pygmalian Rula Lenska (Mrs Higgins), Alistair McGowan (Professor Higgins), photo copyright Manuel Harlan
When British car mechanic, Neil Trotter won £108m on the lottery just over two weeks ago, George Bernard Shaw must have been turning in his grave faster than a Formula One car on the Monaco circuit! But whether the hot rod enthusiast from Surrey will suffer the same fate as Alfred Doolittle, father of cockney flower girl, Eliza, only time will tell!

Last night Bernard Shaw's masterpiece, Pygmalion, opened at Leeds Grand Theatre and what a joy it was to see his play in the 'raw' before it was skewed into something a little more palatable by Lerner and Loewe and re-packaged as the musical, My Fair Lady.

This really was lampoonery at its best as one of the twentieth century's brightest literary stars and unelected independent moralists, set about instigating his own bloodless revolution, by showing how the science of phonetics could be used to unpick Britain's antiquated class system.

It tells the story of Eliza who becomes a phonetics project for Professor Henry Higgins and his pal Colonel Pickering. Between them they agree to rid the cockney street girl of her accent within six months, turn her into a lady and, in doing so, dupe their aristocratic chums into believing that she is one of them. They succeed!

And the performers were impeccable. Eliza's (Rachel Barry) ear splitting bawl at the outset had all the sensitivity of an air raid siren, and I was so impressed by Alistair McGowan as Henry Higgins. Word perfect and so beautifully directed, his lifetime's work as an impressionist and comedian certainly put him in pole position to play this part.

It is a fun play to watch and there's lots of opportunity to laugh out loud, however, there's a deeper meaning behind Shaw's work which looks at the absurdity of vast incomes and how people used to - and indeed still do - seek to take their place at the table of acceptance by writing large cheques and speaking with plums in their mouths.

Footballers wives and oligarchs might do well to watch this play which was carried, seamlessly, by several established actors including Rula Lenska as the suitably well cut but maternal Mrs Higgins, and Jamie Foreman as Alfred Doolittle. For a moment I thought he was going to burst into a quick chorus of 'Get Me to the Church On Time!"

Shaw's play also looks at how quickly acquired wealth - Alfred's unexpected windfall from an American philanthropist- changes lives, sometimes for the worse.

Pygmalion will always be popular whilst ever there is a race between those who have money and those who don't. Shaw might have objected to Lerner and Loewe's musical plans, but their work enabled his words to achieve a durability, and gentle notoriety, by giving them an extended life beyond their original time.

Pygmalion is humorous but, at moments, you want to weep as you see how the dismissive rich talk about the poor as if they were not even there. Without money you were a pawn, to be used by the idle rich, the mill owner, or any other player who had the power of the bank note over you.

French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, once commented: "Man is born equal but everywhere he is in chains". George Bernard Shaw was probably one of the first men to make those chains visible on stage, courtesy of Pygmalion, a funny, sad play that could, on the wrong day, make you angry with the haves and sympathetic towards the have nots.

Until Saturday