Review: The Gods Aren’t Smiling on a New Revival of Shaw’s Pygmalion

David Staller’s revival of Pygmalion, now running at Theatre Row, has a new take on the original that incorporates some of Shaw’s ideas for the film version of his classic play. Whatever your feelings about this classic (I’m not one of its fans), the additions largely fall flat and create a lumbering show that doesn’t satisfy comedically or otherwise.

The story is well-known from its many iterations and adaptations: Henry Higgins (Mark Evans) makes a bet with Colonel Pickering (Carson Elrod) that he can teach an uneducated flower seller, Eliza Doolittle (Synnøve Karlsen), how to become an upper-class lady. His mother and housekeeper (both played by Lizan Mitchell) are scandalized, but when Eliza starts to “improve,” social strivers Clara (Teresa Avia Lim) and Freddy (Matt Wolpe) are charmed. But what happens to Eliza when Higgins wins his bet?

Staller’s choices prove awkward from the moment the audience arrives. Higgins enters through the auditorium, stares at the audience from the stage, and silently takes notes about us for so long it becomes to become disconcerting. Then four Greek gods enter and tell us we are about to see George Bernard Shaw’s version of the Pygmalion myth. Shaw wrote a similar framing device into his 1938 film script of Pygmalion, but the producers wisely convinced him to cut it. If only someone had done the same here. As the gods continue to explain the story in between scenes with Higgins and Eliza, it bogs everything down even more.

Similarly, the gods provide commentary on Higgins, saying he’s childish, afraid of women, life, and human connection. Evans nails the first part; he gives us a man whose awful treatment of the people around him is a result of immaturity and a lack of social graces. He doesn’t quite get across the fear of life and women, but his take is otherwise energetic and buoyant, and surprisingly endearing.

At least the other actors are as committed as Evans. Karlsen brings Eliza to life convincingly as she ascends the social-class ladder. Staller has added brief interstitials that highlight Eliza’s journey, and they work well. Elrod stands out for his multifaceted and authentic Pickering, and Wolpe does a wonderful job making Alfred Doolittle almost likable. Mitchell and Lim, on the other hand, are sometimes grating as the other female characters, vacillating between hysteria and manic energy.

Lindsay G. Fuori’s set, with its Al Hirschfield-inspired drawings, doesn’t contribute thematically to the action, but Jamie Roderick and Tracy Christensen’s period costumes are solid. Julian Evans’s sound was serviceable, though there was a strange and confusing echo on some of Eliza’s wailing.

Though this Pygmalion misses some marks, there are funny moments, such as when Eliza visits Higgins’s mother and convinces her other guests that she is high class. Karlsen relishes the awkwardness and earns laughs through her purposely stilted demeanor, with the absurdity and social satire of “small talk” delighting her listeners translates well to today’s audiences. No gods are needed. The work speaks for itself.