Women upset everything

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

Pygmalion : The Old Vic

I picked this to visit for three reasons - firstly it had Patsy Ferran in it, who was extremely impressive in A Streetcar Named Desire, secondly I'm a big fan of My Fair Lady but I've never seen this and thirdly I've never been to The Old Vic and it's only a 5 minute walk from my office.  So it would have been extremely convenient if I'd gone into work that day - but I didn't, so it wasn't...

And that stage isn't giving us any clues as what we're going to get, is it?  But I've got a good view from my seat in the back row - not the hugest leg room and no arms on the seats, which I can quite see could be a problem with some neighbours, but I didn't have any so all was good.

And it's very much a play of two halves.  The first half has a lighter feel and is pretty close to the musical (yes, it's vice versa if we're being accurate but you know what I mean) - there's quite a lot of dialogue in there that I recognised word for word.  The second half takes a slightly different tack - it has more of a "play" feel to it in a lot of places and it also slightly changes the ending.

As a whole, I liked rather than loved the play.  It had some great moments in it - some funny, some dramatic but as a whole it merely progressed rather than drag me along with it.  The back end of the play where Eliza (Patsy Ferran) and Henry (Bertie Carvel) are battling about what she should do next was the most engaging bit for me - possibly because the musical doesn't spend nearly as time on it, but it just felt like there was more "acting" involved.

Patsy and Bertie's performances were both generally fine, with occasional highpoints - Bertie definitely felt like he was channelling Rex Harrison, whereas Patsy avoided any obvious Audrey Hepburn comparisons.  And whilst I thought they engaged well towards the end, it probably should have happened a bit before that.  Part of the problem for me is that the whole play, but particularly the first half, felt very rushed - the dialogue happens at a million miles an hour.  And there is a LOT of it - the fact that I followed it at all is a compliment to the actors' diction, but I did think that some of the scenes could have been given a bit more space to breathe.

Other actors who are worthy of a mention are John Mendoza who plays Alfred Doolittle in an amusingly forthright manner (and he created the first ripple of applause) and Sylvestra Le Touzel as Henry's mother bringing some humanity to the play - everyone else is fine, but they very much feel like they're working within the confines of their role.

The set is generally quite minimal except for some enormous columns that slide forward from the back of the stage every so often - they're impressive but impressively pointless.  The lack of stage furniture doesn't seem to matter - apart from the chairs very little of it is used.

Wikipedia tells me the play (by George Bernard Shaw, but I'm sure you know that) premiered in 1913 (in Vienna, in German) and is named after a character from Greek mythology who fell in love with one his statues, which then came to life.  Over time, various lines from later versions of the 1938 film (eg "the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain") have become canon in the play.  It also tells me that the original version of the play had an ending very similar to the musical - audiences weren't entirely satisfied by it's open-ended nature and the director changed it, which made Shaw extremely annoyed and he wrote a whole new section on why it mustn't be changed.  Which people have continued to ignore up until this day, it appears.

I wasn't a huge fan of my seat (maybe they're better further forward) but I liked the theatre as a whole - it has quite an interesting layout with a large spiral-ish staircase at the side and a bar on most floors and a bar in the basement.  They also seemed happy to let people in at any time - lots of other places are very precious about such things (which isn't so great when it's -2 outside, as has happened to me).

As I said previously, I liked this rather than loved it.  I was pleased to see the play, but I prefer the musical (and watching the play makes you realise what a great job they did in adapting it).  I liked the acting, but apart from the last quarter they all felt somewhat constrained by either the roles or direction.  And I liked the theatre, but the seats would make me think twice before rushing back there.  So positives and negatives across the board, I'm afraid.

The Effect - Good but not great
King Lear - Impressive, but disappointing