This contemporary take on an old story left me feeling vaguely unsettled. The original story set in the Victorian era sits much more comfortably in that period, but this new version lost some of itself in the modern translation.
The play explores the story of a poor flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, taken under Henry Higgins' wing on the whim of a bet he makes with a colleague, Colonel Pickering. The bet is that Henry will be able to pass off Eliza as a prestigious person at a royal event in six months' time, and no one will realise her lowly beginnings. Inevitably, Eliza falls in love with her teacher and when the bet is won finds herself displaced in a world where class follows strict guidelines.
I feel the modern telling lost some of the story's heart and became very much a story about the science of speech. The first scene shows Mrs Eynsford-Hill, played by Flaminia Cinque, and her son Freddy (Gavi Singh Chera) and her daughter Clara (Racheal Ofori) waiting in the pouring rain. As they speak, each has a different accent and subtitles play up the safety curtain. Freddy goes to find a cab and accidentally knocks into Eliza, sending her flowers tumbling. She is the only one who does not have her speech subtitled, but I'm at a loss to understand the significance of this. When it is revealed that someone in the shadows is watching and taking notes as Eliza speaks, the soundtrack distorts and the characters speak with different accents, at varying speeds, and even rewind some of their lines. It is an effective, if slightly confusing, start.
Eliza Doolittle, played by Natalie Gavin, leaves the stage to get a cab home and the next scene is a film of her in the taxi. Reaching home we follow her into her room where she mimes to a rendering of 'Wouldn't it be Luverley' from the film My Fair Lady. We see her realising that she wishes to take lessons from the man recording her, so as to better herself in life. At Henry Higgins' (Alex Beckett) house, there is a satisfying amount of gadgets, plenty of test equipment, and a sound box, which he puts Eliza into. He is constantly recording everything she utters. Distorted sounds and different syllables being practised fill the air; there is no mistaking Henry's passion for his subject.
The set is simple but the scene showing Mrs Higgins' (Lisa Sadovy) place is a work of art. A clever glass room is used as a room on its own and in another scene as a showpiece to display another area of the house. At one point, Mrs Higgins' dress is the same pattern as the wallpaper. These were all great, humorous touches.
Ian Burfield as Eliza's father, Alfred Doolittle gives a larger-than-life performance. He even froze the actors so as to talk directly to the audience, a technique used more than once in this play.
The second act had a poignancy to it with Eliza's feelings not being taken into account after winning the bet for Professor Higgins. But it had me wondering what message, if any, the play was trying to convey. Which is more important: what you say, or the way you say it? Did changing her speech and accent make Eliza unfit/unable to go back to selling flowers? No. Did living with two eccentric gentlemen, one who treated her abominably, and the other like a lady, make her unfit/unable to return to her past life? Yes, I would say so.
Only Colonel Pickering (Raphael Sowole) had a balanced view on the whole project. Henry Higgins, although full of noble sentiments - "Do I treat anyone better than you?" - was a damaged and flawed character whose pride prevented him achieving true happiness, and also, indirectly, preventing Eliza's. I found the ending a surprise and a disappointment, as it wasn't the happy outcome I'd been expecting.
