The world can feel fixed, established by dead generations and enforced by every institution. But Shaw wrote his upbeat comedy Pygmalion on the eve of the First World War at a time of courageous struggles by women fighting for the right to vote and a wave of workers strikes. There were eleven and a half million strikes alone in Britain in nineteen-thirteen, the year of its first performance.
The play entertainingly explores three ways people change the social position they are born into. Education, according to the character Professor Henry Higgins, can allow the poor flower girl Eliza to pass as a duchess visiting Buckingham Palace. Money handed to her roguish father can change his social position. Importantly, Eliza can walk out on the bullying Higgins without money or a job and make her own future.
All of that is in Richard Jones’s uneven production at the Old Vic. His impressive team includes Patsy Ferran as Eliza Doolittle, alongside Bertie Carvell as Professor Henry Higgins. There is music, a striking set and an energetic, fast-moving performance with a keen eye for visual comedy. Yet, for all its fun, it unnecessarily clouds Shaw’s message with surprising oddities.
There is a cartoonish knockabout quality to early scenes, which shift away from realism. Everyone seems to be constantly moving. Eliza occasionally manages in minutes to move around every bit of the stage.
The script is spoken very quickly and with little flexibility. The exceptions to the tendency are the impressive performances of Sylvestra Le Touzel as Mrs Higgins and Penny Layden as Mrs Pearce, the housekeeper.
You will get the gist of those early scenes and laugh, but you won’t be able to catch all the words. It’s as if Richard Jones would like to get them over very quickly.
In contrast, the later scenes settle into a more nuanced depiction of the comedy and ideas, with Patsy Ferran giving a remarkably watchable performance as the changed Eliza. She is very moving in her final scenes with Henry.
This production will generate laughs and may, during its run, begin to show more sensitivity to the ideas. In the meantime, it would be a shame if audiences new to the play came away with the notion that Pygmalion is outdated with little to say about the world we live in.