Pygmalion

Venue: Lyric Theatre, HK Academy for Performing Arts.

Lightweight entertainment? Not bloody likely!
Peter Hall's Revival of Bernard Shaw’s Comic Classic is a Triumph
“The finest Shaw in years.” Daily Telegraph
Exclusive Asian Premiere
Most people know the musical adaptation of Pygmalion: My Fair Lady; many sing along to the songs and most love the final scene, a happy ending of love and marriage. An ending, incidentally, that George Bernard Shaw derided as “damnable”. Shaw deliberately subverted Ovid's Metamorphoses when he wrote Pygmalion. In his play, the boy doesn't get the girl. Sir Peter Hall's “scintillating revival of Shaw's most famous comedy” (The Guardian) returns to the original text resulting in a wry comedy about class, language and emotion.
Arrogant, pompous and truculent Henry Higgins bets that he can transform guttersnipe Eliza from a Cockney flower-seller into a posh lady. She is eager for elocution lessons and he takes on the task with diabolical joy. He attempts to change Eliza's entire personality, oblivious to the consequences for her. While not overtly political, Shaw's play reflects his sympathy for the suffragette movement and has a distinct feminist bent. Rather than marry his transformation, as did Ovid's Pygmalion, Higgins is left forlorn as Eliza's metamorphosis gives her unexpected independence and strength of character, allowing her to leave him.
Pygmalion delighted both audiences and critics when it opened in Bath in 2007. This superb production is a triumph for Hall. Shaw had become unfashionable ─ his plays considered only lightweight entertainment. Hall's production rediscovers Shaw as a writer who merged the comic and the serious, writing about character and human destiny. Described as “astonishingly fresh and funny” (Sunday Times), Hall's rendition exposes the danger of being transformed into someone else's toy.
Eliza's scandalous exit line, “Walk! Not bloody likely”, continues to cause laughter; it is a comedy after all. But it is the seriousness of the play that remains powerful and contemporary.