Review of Pygmalion (Stage Left and Boho Theatres)

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Pygmalion and it was by George Bernard Shaw and directed by Vance Smith. It was about a girl named Eliza Doolittle (Mouzam Makkar) who was a flower girl, and a man named Henry Higgins (Steve O'Connell) decided to make her into a duchess. He teaches her many things that make her seem like a duchess like dressing her in fancy clothes, making her speak very clearly, and changing her mind by making her obey men all the time. I think it can be a good idea to help somebody change, but not to just make them change. Like if they are too obsessed about how they look or something (you should care about how you look but not so much that you have to look as pretty as possible every day), so you could tell them a nice way of saying that and then they might change because it could be for their own good. Professor Higgins thinks he is helping Eliza for her own good but he isn't.

I thought the scene where Eliza was at Henry Higgins' mother's (Lisa Herceg) house was interesting and funny. I thought one of the funny things in the scene was when Clara Eynsford-Hill (Rebecca Mauldin) was influenced by Eliza because she said an old-fashioned bad word, which was bloody, which is not bad at all anymore. People wouldn't even call it a swear word. Clara says "Such bloody nonsense" and runs out of the room squealing. The scene shows us that Henry Higgins swears a lot and that he is influencing young ladies who are not supposed to say those words. Higgins goes to his mother's house to see if Miss Eliza Doolittle is presentable because his mother is so refined. Eliza is not presentable because she says bloody and stuff that young ladies should not say in that time. The actual effect is that Eliza gets two admirers, Freddie (Charles Riffenburg) and Clara because they think her style is like the new thing in history.

There was this scene that I thought was very well done because it showed that Colonel Pickering (Sandy Elias) loved Eliza more than Prof. Higgins did--not romantic love but more that he didn't want to throw her out in the street. In this scene Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering are drunk because they have just been to a lot of parties where there was a lot of wine and they tasted every wine bottle. At one point Eliza says how much Colonel Pickering had helped her but that Henry Higgins had not helped her very much because Henry Higgins actually wasn't very refined. He swore a lot at the table and put his shoes in very strange places. But Pickering was a very good example. He never swore at the table and he always put his shoes in front of a place where he would remember them. Not like Henry Higgins. Pickering treated her like a lady, not like a piece of clay. I used the phrase piece of clay because Pygmalion is based on a Greek mythology and there is a man that falls in love with a statue that he made.

There was scene where Eliza's father, Mr. Doolittle (Mark Pracht), is about to get married. I thought that Mr. Doolittle was funny most of the time because he was so clueless about what was going to happen to his daughter. This was the last scene in the play and it is important because it kind of shows that Higgins kind of falls in love with Eliza at the very end. I think he was kind of trying to be romantic but he didn't really want to do that because he didn't really want to admit that he was in love with Eliza because he said that he was never going to be in love with any woman. I think it wouldn't have been a good idea anyway if he had loved her because he had been so mean to her in the past.

I think one of the only problems with the play was that I think they should have given Freddie a bigger part. The problem was not with the acting but with the writing. Then you could have kind of more understood how he could be in love with Eliza. Because it kind of didn't make sense how he could be in love with Eliza because he had only met her like twice that you see.

I thought that the dialect coach (Lindsay Bartlett) did a very good job with the dialect. I thought all of the accents were really spot on. I think Eliza Doolittle's accent was perfect. It was exactly like I think it should have sounded. The Os sounded more like OW and less like O which I thought was really good.

People who would like this show are people who like Greek mythology, fancy ladies, and people that swear at the dinner table. You should go see this show because it is fun and lovely. It teaches you that women count. They should be able to do what they want and not let men boss them around. It is bloody well done. (Screeeeeech!)

Photos: Johnny Knight