A THINKING PLAY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 120, 21 May 1926, Page 13

A THINKING PLAY

REPERTORY SOCIETY IN SHAW COMEDY

G. B. Shaw's weirdly clever comedy, "Pygmalion," received last evening a most intelligent interpretation from the National Repertory Theatre Society. The play pivots on the making of a lady out of a Cockney guttersnipe flower-seller, Eliza. Professor Higgins —-'professor of phonetics, plus phychology, plus audacity—so polishes up the raw material that within some incredibly short space of time she has the diction and outward equipment of a drawing-room product, and the Professor prides himself on his synthetic success, exulting in the boast that he put "every word into her mouth and every idea iv her head." But because the girl is human, and not one of those automata that are mechanically "manufactured and manipulated by ventriloquists or Punch-and-Judy showmen, the Professor meets with contingent results- —one might add contingent liabilities —that are beyond the resources of his lady-making outfit and his psychological laboratory. In one particularly well-rendered passage, Eliza (Miss Nan Pike) pleads that a lady is a lady as much through the treatment she receives as through the treatment she gives; aud by his rudeness the Professor—who can teach fine airs but cannot learn them—puts a cruel break upon the progress of his pupil. Besides his own boorishness towards the girl to whom he has opened the door of the haven of refinement, his total neglect of her wordly future adds to her sorrows. Superficially polished, and put out of key with her old gutter environment —how is she to earn a living? How can she go back to flower-selling on the London pavement? There is, of course, the marriage market, but this she scorns—even in her most unregenerato days she only sold flowers, she never sold herself. No, she will not be degraded to driving an economic bargain sealed with a wedding ring. The whole endless problem—all the ramifications of social uplift, minus (for an unskilled woman) any independent method of living up to its requirements—is touched from many angles; and Shaw brings in the girl's father —the self-confessed "undeserving poor"—and makes him, per medium of a rich American's legacy, another sad "object-lesson" of the unhappiness resulting from a rise in the social-monetary scale. The spectacle is enough to bring tears to the eyes of Trotsky, who might even get his revolution if only this pernicious practice of converting happy proletarians into unhappy but respectable bourgeoisie could be put an«eud to. Shaw, however, does not in this play work the political side of the paradox. Ho is busy enough getting comedy out of the social side, out of the concussions in the eternal man-woman problem when social-climbing throws intellectual bombs into the litter of settled convictions. Enough has been said to show that Shaw, in this as in other plays, commits the well-nigh unpardonable crime of asking his audiences to : thinl_; and that is why thinking people should support the National Repertory Theatre Society, organised to present, through gifted amateurs, these jewels of wit and thought that are spurned by the commercial stage. Shaw's intellectualism easily finds rapid root in fertile soil, but no play is anything without the players, and it is difficult to know whether to give first praise to tho cast or to the producer, Mr. Leo dv Chateau. With all tho mechanical limitations attaching to the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall so far as this class of production is concerned, the performance of "Pygmalion" last night was entitled to rank anywhere. None of the limitations of a high-class amateur production weighed anytihng against the general fact that the interpretation was excellent. Miss Nan Pike got well on the inside of the pivot-role of Eliza; she not only spoke the part—at first a bit nervously—but acted it; in • the scene in which the Professor and his friend, Colonel Pickering, after passing Eliza successfully through the Duchess's drawing-room, congratulate themselves on their synthetic success, and feed their own vanity without oven looking at the lonely girl who has been clay in their hands, her face has to talk constantly to the audi.nce, ■ and this wordless effort was not the least of her successes. Mr. W. S. Wauchop also reached a very high level as the Professor, and carries most of the action with scarcely a flaw. Mr. Vivian Rhind surprised all with an out-of-thc-comrnon characterisation of Eliza's father, a proletarian pleader whose uneducated eloquence can soften the features of vice and clothe blackmail in a frock-coat. Miss A. Louise Hall realised all the good things that lie in the lines of the housekeeper who has to ch"-;iTone Eliza in the Professor's bachelor abode. Colonel Pickering, the Professor's associate, was well played by Mr. Fletcher Turner. Other pnrts were: Mrs. Higgins, played by Mrs. John Hanna; Mrs. Eynsford Hill, by Mrs. Coleridge; Miss Eynsford Hill, by Miss Miles (who put her words, and particularly the most important one, well over the footlights); Freddy, by Mr. Frank H. Burden; Maid, Miss Thyra Baldwin. Mr. Joseph Hujit and Mr. J. Todd M'C_tw were "bystanders." ■ Considering the stage limitations, "Pygmalion" was well staged. The production is really full of credit. It may be seen in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall this and 'to-morrow evenings.