Word: pygmalions
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...Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw's bitter, biting parody of this social philanthropy, exposes its futile results. Shaw, a leading Fabian socialist of his day, believed that it was not the workers but the middle class that needed to be changed, not suddenly but through a "gradual" permeation of socialist ideas and institutions in their capitalist midsts. His dubious hero in Pygmalion is exactly the kind of man who would not be receptive to tactics such as these: a leading London phoneticist determined to translate a flower girl into a "duchess" so effectively that, he wagers, no one will be able...
Recreating Shaw's recreation of English society to the letter, the current Leverett House production of Pygmalion lends just the touch of self-irony to his characters that the members of the middle class in England so sorely lacked. By accenting those moments in the play, both humorous and poignant, when two people cannot quite connect, director Samual Bloomfield has skillfully done justice to the underlying point of Shaw. Even the beautifully painted flats of Jeff Goodman's and Cindy Ruskins's set unfold mysteriously from Covent Garden to Higgins' library to his mother's house and back and forth...
...Eliza's trial by fire, Higgins and his companion Colonel Pickering are filled with the nervous energy of expectation instead of the self-satisfied exhaustion they should be feeling after the successful ordeal they shared. But ironically even this weakness ends up working in favor of the production. This Pygmalion links its audience to the lack of connection between the classes in this age. It is as though, instead of having tried to make real contact with the poor, the actors, like the middle class philanthropists they are parodying, simply leave the money...
...PYGMALION IS A PLAY about individuals triumphing over class boundaries. The ultimate success of any production of the play depends on the actors' handling of the lead roles. Maura Moynihan's protrayal of Eliza is rich enough to do justice to Shaw's famous study of the poor flower girl. From the first moment when she pleads with passers-by in a beguiling drawl, Moynihan gives a superlative performance. Whether clothed in rags or in a silk robe, she mixes the pride and shame of a woman who knows she is a truer lady than those who only appear...
...Moynihan moves triumphantly to the door and disappears. As the lights go down on Agush, a single question is left. It is to the credit of the Leverett production of Pygmalion, and to Moynihan's performance, that we are left wondering not what Higgins believes or even what Shaw intended, but whether Eliza herself expects to come back...