Rainbow Theatre

Rainbow Theatre

Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw

Directed by Makki Marseilles

Costumes / Hats by Kim O'Neill

Premiere : 23 November 1996

"You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party."

Professor Higgins claims when he first sees Eliza selling flowers in the street outside Covent Garden. But Bernard Shaw's dramatization of a Cockney flower girl's metamorphosis into a lady not only is a delightful fantasy but also has much to say about social class, money, spiritual freedom and women's independence.

The Author George Bernard Shaw was altogether an extraordinary man and a prolific writer. Born in Ireland in 1856, he left school at the age of fifteen to work as a boy in a Land Agent's firm. He has written four novels, over fifty plays of varying lengths, hundreds of political, literary and economic pamphlets, critical essays which became books in their own right and what must have amounted to thousands of letters. He also spoke to every organisation and society possible as he claimed to have an opinion on everything. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian; he championed human and animal rights; he had views on language both spoken and written;

on politics, religion (he hated Christmas), domestic matters, the theatre, and personal habits. He died in 1950 at the ripe age of 94.

His career as a playwright started after he moved to London in 1876 to join his mother who had left his father to follow her singing teacher there. After a period of unemployment there, he started reviewing art, music and drama in various journals of the period. He started writing plays in 1884 because he thought what was put on in London on the Victorian stage was trivial and without meaning. He pursued the theatre of ideas and held up as an example the great Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, whose plays such as "Hedda Gabler" and "Ghosts" were causing sensation among audiences. He wanted to be considered a realist and he once wrote to the critic William Archer "To me the play is only the means, the end being the expression of feeling by the arts, of the actor, the poet, the musician. Anything that makes this expression more vivid is so much to the good for me."

Shaw fought long and hard battles to change the spelling system of the English language, which he thought was ridiculous and in his will he left a large amount of money for the introduction of a new alphabet to help people pronounce and write easier. He also believed in social justice and equality, the right of the individual to strive for some kind of perfection and that is why he was a member of the Fabian Society which sought to establish "equality as the universal relation between citizens without distinction of sex, colour, occupation, age, talent, character, heredity,… at complete political equality as between the sexes, but their economic independence. It advocates the explicit recognition by legally secured rights or payments of the value of the domestic work of women to their immediate domestic partners and to the State as housekeepers, child bearers, nurses and matrons."

The Myth Bernard Shaw borrowed the story and the title of his play from the Greek mythology. Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus and a very talented sculptor. He lived in the village of Amanthus and was devoted to his creations as he felt they were the only beautiful things around him. He particularly disliked the behaviour of the women of Amanthus. They were called the Propoetides. So, Pygmalion, isolated, spent a long time making the ivory statue of a beautiful woman, which he called Galatea. The statue was so beautiful he fell in love with it, so he prayed to Aphrodite to breathe life to it. Since he was a devoted follower to her, the goddess granted him his wish. Galatea came to life and Pygmalion married her.

About Money The English currency changed in 1971. At the time of the play, a pound, which was also called a sovereign, was divided in 20 shillings, each shilling in twelve pence, one pence in two half pennies and four farthings. To get an idea, consider that at the first performance of Pygmalion, one could have tea, bread, butter and cakes, all for 6 pence. Today (in 2003) it would cost him more than £5.

The play and the musicals It was first performed on Saturday, 11 April 1914 to critical acclaim and it was an immediate success. Shaw became the talk of the town and his financial security was assured. In 1956 it was turned into a musical, "My Fair Lady" by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe, granting Julie Andrews a personal success worldwide. Eliza's words "Not bloody likely…" caused a sensation. It was the first time an actress pronounced them on a London stage and the day after the premiere the papers devoted their front pages to the event. Its film version with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn couldn't be other than an immensely successful one. Its re-mastering a few years ago has brought back the beauty of a splendid bunch of film makers and the wonders they can do with such a powerful piece of writing as Shaw's Pygmalion.