Word: shavians
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...first thing any Shavian will probably tell you about Pygmalion is not to think of it as the non-musical version of My Fair Lady. That's the alias by which it's most commonly recognized, which is not at all to its discredit: few more delightful musicals have ever been written. But what the romantic aura of the Broadway adaptation obscures, and what the new Lyric Stage production generally succeeds in conveying, is the darker, harder-edged quality that persists beneath all the sparkle...
...mobility and the potential of human education-the idea that even a flower girl can be transformed into a lady by learning to speak and dress like one. And on this level, the play is a joy to watch, grounding the fairy tale quality of the story with gloriously Shavian wit. But as a drama of human relations, it's much more frustrating and far less palatable than many of the playwright's other works (the fourth act, when done with enough punch, is one of the most brutally painful scenes Shaw ever wrote). As a mentor figure, Henry Higgins...
...which Eliza makes her first appearance in genteel society, Mary Klug and Celeste McClain add to the laugh quota as the dresden-china gentlewoman Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and her would-be-fashionable daughter Clara, while Neil McGarry plays an appropriately pop-eyed Freddy, Eliza's fatuous suitor. This scene-Shavian social comedy at its greatest-is probably the best of the entire production, though McConnell mugs a little too hard as the half-finished creation...
...surface, "Man and Superman" is a delightfully Shavian romantic comedy which reverses conventional roles by making the woman the vigilant pursuer and the man the hapless prey. The woman, Ann Whitefield (Kristin Flanders), is past mistress of twisting men around her little finger, and she has designs on her childhood companion, Jack tanner (played with dynamic vigor by Don Reilly), a young man and a decided taste for overbearing oratory. Much to his consternation, Jack is appointed one of Ann's guardians after her father's death--the other one being a confirmed old conservative, Roderick Ramsden (Alvin Epstein...
Other staging effects contribute to the half-serious tone of the play: the Devil rises up from beneath the stage with a fine ominous flourish that is quickly and comically undercut by the revelation of his face, and the strains of Mozart's Don Giovanni are continually succeeded by Shavian reversals of the famous legend. Costumes, too, are magnificent, including a perfect reproduction of the turn-of-the century upper-middle class English motorist's get-up (frock coat, cap and goggles) and the impressively stony garb of the Statue...