(Photo courtesy of the company)
Rupert Everett, playing Henry Higgins, and Honeysuckle Weeks, as Eliza Doolittle, have opened in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Chichester Festival, where it will continue through August 27. Philip Prowse has directed and designed the production, which has lighting design by Gerry Jenkinson.
The company also features Candida Benson (Clara Eynsford Hill), Susie Blake (Mrs Pearce), Stephanie Cole (Mrs Higgins), Marty Cruickshank (Mrs Eynsford Hill), Phil Davis (Alfred Doolittle), Peter Eyre (Colonel Pickering), and Peter Sandys-Clarke (Freddy Eynsford Hill), along with ensemble members Rebecca Birch, Freya Dominic, Brendan Hooper and Tristram Wymark.
Both print and web reviews abound and critics, divided on the strengths of Weeks’ work, are all finding both Everett’s performance and Prowse’s production problematic. Unanimous praise is going to Cole for her portrayal of Mrs. Higgins.
Among the reviews are:
Daily Telegraph
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists / Pygmalion at Chichester Festival Theatre, review
“Philip Prowse directs and designs an ostentatious production, which sets the action in a red plush Edwardian theatre. He has also interpolated a final scene, undreamt of by Shaw, in which Eliza marries the amiable but brainless Freddie to Higgins’s palpable dismay.”
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“…and though Rupert Everett seems too modern, too louche and not quite posh enough as Higgins, Honeysuckle Weekes is a delightful Eliza, as she moves from the deliciously strangulated diphthongs of the guttersnipe to distressed indignation and finally serene self confidence.”
Evening Standard
Welcome to a double bill of social conscience in Chichester
“Everett, all too infrequently seen on our stages, proffers an appealing combination of confidence and disdain as a youthful-looking Henry Higgins, the Professor of Phonetics whose behaviour is that of a petulant child, albeit with an unusually academic set of toys. It’s a pity, then, that he often seems awkward, relying overmuch on a hangdog expression.”
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“As Eliza Doolittle, the flower-selling “guttersnipe” Higgins promises to turn into a fine-vowelled lady, Weeks is a striking and charismatic bundle of shrieks and glottal stops. In a curious inversion of the usual path taken by an actress playing Eliza, Weeks becomes less convincing the closer to her natural accent she advances.”
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“Elsewhere, there’s strong support from Stephanie Cole as a sharp-speaking Mrs Higgins and Peter Eyre as the Professor’s genial foil, Colonel Pickering.”
Financial Times
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists/Pygmalion, Chichester
“Philip Prowse’s production of Pygmalion…is all effect and little substance.”
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“As Professor Henry Higgins, Rupert Everett sports a well-trimmed beard that is positively timid by Edwardian standards and inexplicably overdone expressionist eye make-up. His is a comparatively one-note delivery, and he seldom seems to look anyone else in the eye; it is as if Everett is still mentally trying to get a fix on his performance.”
The Guardian
Pygmalion
“…this revival, directed by Philip Prowse, strikes me as a coarse, strident affair that misses much of its psychological subtlety.”
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“Rupert Everett’s saturnine Higgins strikes a note of rasping anger from which he scarcely shifts. There is little suggestion of either the scholarly obsessive or the sadness of a man who awakes too late to Eliza’s vibrancy.”
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“The best performances come from the peripheral characters: there is a superb cameo from Stephanie Cole as Higgins’s aristocratic mother. But it’s a measure of the production’s crudity that it ends with a full-blown staging of Eliza’s marriage to Freddy Eynsford-Hill, to which Higgins responds with angry contempt.”
Whatsonstage.com
Pygmalion (Chichester)
“Director/designer Philip Prowse’s ornate staging has the look and feel of a Victorian toy theatre; it’s opulent but there’s a coldness at the heart.”
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“Rupert Everett doesn’t look comfortable as Higgins. He’s older than Shaw’s description, but he acts younger – in fact, he acts too young, looking like he’s been expecting the call to play Hamlet rather than a phonetics professor.”
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“Honeysuckle Weeks does her best with Eliza, but struggles with the cockney vowels in the first scenes – many of her opening lines are inaudible. She comes more into her own in Mrs Higgins’ soiree, traversing the stage with her dainty but measured tread, even though her voice is again too small.”
