Theater Review - Pyg headed

Without distractions, Pygmalion would be loverly

The title of George Bernard Shaw’s comedy, Pygmalion, refers to phonetics teacher Henry Higgins and not penniless cockney Eliza Doolittle. In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus who carved and fell in love with the statue of a woman, which came to life and was named Galatea.

Pygmalion’s musical adaptation, My Fair Lady (not to mention imitations like the movie Pretty Woman), is named after the impoverished flower girl, but Shaw pointedly did not title the original play Galatea. Theatre in the Square’s inconsistent production, directed by August Staub, shows how Shaw is just as interested in the emotional estrangement of Higgins as Eliza’s evolution from guttersnipe to gentlewoman.

The opening scene introduces Higgins (James Donadio) as a kind of Sherlock Holmes when it comes to accents. He’s able to identify the region — and often the neighborhood — of someone’s birthplace simply by hearing them speak a few words. Coincidence brings together many of the play’s characters, including quintessential English gentleman Col. Pickering (Don Finney, frosted with a little too much makeup) and Eliza (Monica Williamson).

Pygmalion’s premise is well-known: Higgins bets Pickering that he can teach Eliza to speak and conduct herself with such refinement that she can pass herself as royalty in six months. Having Eliza recite her ABCs (“Ay, Bay, Say ...” she pronounces), Higgins comes across like a tyrannical director working with a novice actress. The comedy is derived from uncouth Eliza adjusting to high society, like a fish out of water — or at least in unfamiliar water, as she discovers the pleasures of how rich people bathe.

But Shaw is also interested in the dynamics of class against class and gender against gender. Though Pygmalion remains one of Shaw’s strongest plays, his pointed social commentary doesn’t necessarily make for belly laughs, and some of the overtly comic moments, like Eliza scandalizing the swells by using the expletive “bloody,” are a bit dated. Nevertheless, Theatre in the Square’s staging seems aimed at tickling the audience as much as possible.

When Eliza’s father (David Milford) meets Higgins and Pickering, the production milks the situation for every joke possible. Sporting whiskers that stick out at oblique angles, Doolittle builds to a speech about himself as one of “the undeservin’ poor,” which Milford delivers like an attorney’s argument and all but begs for an ovation. Between the banter, the actors work in gags like a pratfall, picking of ears and even a fart joke, nearly all of which seem imposed on Shaw’s text. Not that incidental business can’t be effective, as Milford has some very graceful and amusing bits with a top hat in the second act.

Like other shows Staub has directed for Theatre in the Square, Pygmalion has a fondness for using the theater’s aisles, which can be annoying if you happen to be sitting next to them. During Eliza’s embassy debut scene, murmuring actors remain in the aisle so long you may be tempted to call an usher.

The production’s strangest element is Mark Pitt’s performance as Freddy, the lightweight, love-besotted chap who wishes to marry Eliza by the play’s end. Pitt, however, plays Freddy as bursting with inexplicable anger, as if he’s a brute-to-be. He seethes in his first appearance, trying to catch a cab and later, when Eliza attempts cultured conversation in the parlor of Higgins’ mother (Jackie Prucha), he snickers loudly and pointedly, as if overtly mocking the young woman. He even breathes heavily and mutters under his breath, as if seized by some affliction, and distracts from the comedy of Eliza’s speech. Perhaps the production is floating a concept here — that Eliza’s option to marry Freddy has sinister implications — but it requires turning the character upside down.

When the staging doesn’t get in the way of the play, Pygmalion can be perfectly charming. Williamson sells Eliza’s cockney accent pretty hard in the early scenes, making an exclamation that sounds like a cat caught in a chimney. But she maintains both Eliza’s independence and vulnerability, and intriguingly, in the latter part of the play, she mixes her newly learned accent with her street talk during times of high emotion.

There’s probably more than a little of Shaw in the outspoken, egotistical Higgins. Donadio effectively uses his height to emphasize Higgins’ supercilious, overbearing qualities and doesn’t worry about making the character lovable: “She’s so deliciously low,” he all but purrs of Eliza early on. The production’s best scenes are the angry second-act confrontations between Eliza and Higgins, and Donadio carefully reveals that Higgins has grown fonder of Eliza than he admits, but he is too cold and set in his ways to love or to change.

My Fair Lady ends with Higgins and Eliza getting together at the end, which isn’t nearly as convincing as Pygmalion’s more ambiguous, downbeat conclusion. The irony of the play is that Eliza, the student, proves herself able to adapt and grow, while Higgins, the teacher, stays true to himself in a way that’s ultimately self-defeating. In the myth, the statue of Galatea becomes flesh and blood; in Pygmalion, Higgins doesn’t quite make that metamorphosis.

Pygmalion plays through Sept. 23 at Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta, at 8 p.m. Tues.-Sat. and 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sun. $20-$25. 770-422-8369.??