Theater Review—

‘Pygmalion’ Goes Back To The Basics,

And Sherman Has A Strong Cast For It

By Julie Stern

SHERMAN — Going to see George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is like unexpectedly running across an old friend. Almost everyone is familiar with the Lerner-Loewe musical, but it isn’t until you encounter the original play from which My Fair Lady was taken that you realize how many of the bitingly funny lines in the musical are really straight, unadulterated Shaw.

Sherman Players have assembled a fine cast and under the guidance of a strong, talented director, are offering performances of this classic for two more weekends.

The title of the play comes from the Greek myth of the master sculptor, Pygmalion, who created Galatea, a statue so beautiful and perfect that he fell in love with it. Shaw used this image as a template for his story of the eccentric linguist Henry Higgins, who bets that he can take a Cockney flower girl and make her indistinguishable from the cream of London society, just by teaching her proper diction.

Shaw’s point is the stupidity of the British class system, whose highest echelons are characterized by utter vapidity. Eliza Doolittle (Higgins’ Galatea) has brains, energy, and will, but it is the bell shaped tones with which she murmurs well-rehearsed platitudes about the weather, that lead her to be embraced by the Mayfair crowd.

Here the law of unintended consequences takes hold: Now that she has been made over into a “lady,” Eliza is no longer fit to return to her old life, as a working girl. Yet she has no money on which to live in her new persona.

Furthermore, she resents the arrogance with which Higgins takes for granted his control over her. Galatea is not grateful to Pygmalion for treating her like an object.

Director Jane Farnol does her usual masterful job in bringing the play to life in Sherman, getting fine performances (and proper accents) from her large cast. Jenny Schuck is a properly spirited Eliza, and she is well matched by Steve Manzino and Glenn R. Couture as Professor Higgins and his soft hearted fellow bachelor, Colonel Pickering.

Joseph Russo is sweetly devoted as the dim-witted Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who loves Eliza but is too well bred to work, and too impoverished to keep her. Katherine Almquist is wonderfully caustic as Henry’s wise and long-suffering mother, and of course in typical Shavian fashion, the best lines belong to Ed Bernstein as Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Doolittle the dustman- a self-declared representative of the “undeserving poor.”

Doolittle cheerfully sells his daughter’s honor for five pounds, but is then undone when a lucrative grant from an American idealist turns him into a member of the middle class, whereby he is trapped into middle class morality.

In an interesting twist, director Farnol has the bit parts and extras played by a group of children, who are so well coached that it seems perfectly natural rather than cute. What a great experience for them, including a small granddaughter who seems to have inherited the family gift.

Judiciously cut to a workable length, Pygmalion offers a lively evening of entertainment, and exposure to one of the great playwrights of the English language.

(Performances are Friday and Saturday evenings at 8, and tickets are $15.

The Sherman Playhouse is at the intersection of routes 37 and 39, behind Sherman Firehouse. Call 860-354-3622 for reservations and additional information.)