By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Saturday 16 September (matinee), opens 19 September runs through 28 October 2023 RUNTIME: 135 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Ferran and Carvel are 2 of this country’s finest actors and here they combine in a very familiar, London-set production of this classic without songs to produce something quite unexpected.

• Read on for reasons including why this is the funniest and sharpest Pygmalion we’ve ever seen

We’ve recently seen Carvel’s Trump (The 47th, Old Vic) and Rupert Murdoch (Ink, Almeida) and his Professor Higgins is far less sympathetic than we’ve ever seen the character played before with a maddening lack of social etiquette complete with an idiosynchractic tongue loll outside his mouth when his behaviour is especially beastly, which is often.

Ferran’s Covent Garden flowergirl Eliza Doolittle may be well below Higgins’ social station but is extraordinarily quick-witted and blessed with an endless capacity to learn.

Ferran very much saved Rebecca Frecknall’s A Streetcar Named Desire which transferred from the Almeida to the West End this year, and we very much enjoy the visual references by her to the play’s title because in ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life.

Higgins is a phoneticist and we’ve that morning just got off the plane after a trip to Argentina where the locals speak Spanish with a thick accent that sees them swallowing some sounds and so we can appreciate his talent at placing a person within several miles of their birthplace depending upon how they speak. ‘The rain in Spain …’ indeed.

Doolittle asks for lessons and Higgins and colleague Colonel Pickering strike a bet to see whether the former can tutor her within months to see whether her humble origins can go undiscovered at a ball where she will be presented as a lady.

Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw which was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty’s Theatre in the West End in April 1914.

It has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film but is perhaps best known for its 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film. We reviewed it most recently in 2022 in its Coliseum musical version.

We remarked then that it was the character of Mrs Higgins’ mother, here played by the fantastically funny Sylvestra Le Touzel (The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Donmar Warehouse), who foresees the problems an educated Doolittle will face and brings some humanity to the predicament.

We also weren’t expecting to laugh quite so much with the charming John Marquez whose persuasiveness and charisma as Eliza’s father hints at the inherited gifts she is able to draw on.

Director Richard Jones (Endgame, Old Vic) brings some nice touches to the production allowing the cast to enter and exit the action from the stalls and we are delighted to be on the end of a row where Taheen Modack as impetuously in love Freddy Eynsford-Hill thrusts a bouquet towards the object of his affection close to the stage and next to where we are sitting.

Also, given the early theme of recorded speech, we enjoy the pink stippling of the box set including speaker-shaped holes.

No spoilers but the ending of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady can often be problematic but the tweaks to the dialogue Jones allows here make much better sense of it than we have seen previously before.

The comic performances of Carvel, drawing on the grotesque imagery that made his Miss Trunchball in Matilda the musical, so memorable, and an eye-swivellingly hilarious Ferran make this the funniest Pygmalion as well as the sharpest we can ever remember seeing.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Old Vic Theatre Tickets
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