An Inspired Folly from Roughcast Theatre
Posted on 22nd November 2024
George Bernard Shaw’s tale of Eliza Dolittle’s transformation has undergone so many iterations over the years that the themes and tone of the original play have been obscured, it not lost. Even the version of Pygmalion presented by Roughcast Theatre was, I’m convinced, Shaw’s reworked version following the success of the 1938 film. Taking a lead from the film, all sorts of comedy business was added, though compared to the later musical, it remained a surprising dark examination of class, intolerance and misogyny, aspects of the play the company fearlessly confronted head on in their entertaining and thought provoking production.
The play was presented largely devoid of set dressing or sound design, which made the opening scene all the more striking. As the rain poured, the cast, as well as the characters, were introduced to the audience. Tautly choreographed by director Paul Baker it gave the audience a sense of the scale of the production, before largely retiring to the drawing room. Thereafter, the action settled down, presenting Shaw’s witty text with the clarity and precision that the central conceit of the drama demanded. Able support was provided by Keith Charman as Colonel Pickering and Pat Parris as Mrs Pearce, who both had a lot of exposition to get through. The play, however, is all about the tempestuous relationship between Higgins and Eliza, and both characters were well served by excellent performances from Scarlet Fisher and Grant Filshill. It what I think might be her first leading role, Fisher has to effectively play two parts, both of which she carried off with remarkable confidence. Filshill’s pompous, opinionated Higgins was a delight, deftly walking a fine line between odious and charming, while occasionally daring to be straightforwardly unpleasant. Along the way, Cherryl Jeffries helped the audience excuse Higgins behaviour with her exacting portrait of his exasperated mother, while Peter Long shamelessly scene stole with his eccentric outing as Neopummuck. Both drew howls of laughter from the audience, as did Rob Johnson’s cleverly understated reading of Alfred Doolittle.
The laughs diminished, however, as the play drew to a close, and the repercussions of Higgins’s social experiment became grimly exposed. Faithful to Shaw’s refusal to end on a happy note, Roughcast ratcheted up the unease with which the principles engaged, concluding on a note of exquisite bathos. However dramatic one judges Eliza’s transformation, far more shocking is that Higgins does not change at all.