Post by Steve on Sept 9, 2023 22:57:37 GMT
Saw this tonight and thought it was absolutely brilliant!
For me, Richard Jones does the remarkable, which is to present the whole play, without tampering with it to more than an imperceptible degree, and yet add whole additional levels of insight.
Patsy Ferran and Bertie Carvel are fantastic together.
Some spoilers follow. . .
This is the revised version of the play that Shaw wrote, adding the changes he made for the 1938 movie, which is why it's so similar to "My Fair Lady," which they got to work on as soon as Shaw died, in defiance of his wish that it not be turned into a musical lol.
Shaw insisted they cast Wendy Hiller in the 1938 movie, having already used her in a production on stage, so for me, her "Lisson Grove 1912 accent" is a touchstone for what Shaw envisioned the character might sound like, and I felt Patsy Ferran sounds much the same at the beginning of the play.
This is the third production I've seen of this play, and is the richest and most original by far.
The 2011 Garrick version was traditional, except Rupert Everett portrayed Higgins as dour and mean-spirited, rather than the excitable scientist and inventor that Shaw intended (see Leslie Howard in the 1938 film, for example, or read Shaw's notes on the character, that he wrote in response to everybody begging him to turn the story into a romcom). The best thing about the 2011 production was seeing Higgins's fierce mother (Diana Rigg) drip scorn all over Everett's Higgins's bad attitude.
At the Old Vic, in 2008, by contrast, I felt Tim Pigott-Smith was the quintessential Higgins, every bit the playful, excitable but casually superior gentleman that Shaw intended, and Michelle Dockery was the quintessential Eliza, opposite him, vulnerable but becoming a powerful defiant and emotional Galatea. The production was traditional in the best way, everything Shaw intended, no more no less.
This version goes beyond Shaw, without betraying him. It finds an explanation for why Higgins is the way he is. It makes sense of how an essentially decent playful guy can behave so pigheadedly.
And it goes further still, exploring the value of compartmentalised (traditionally masculine) ways of thinking and the value of emotionalism (traditionally feminine) in contrast to rationalism.
The result of this intellectual distance is to move away from judging the characters, towards having compassion for them all, especially for Bertie Carvel's Higgins, who can't help the way he is, and lacks the flexibility of Eliza to change.
How is this achieved?
The set takes the face of the technology Higgins uses to obsess about the world, the blocks and dots of loudspeakers, that broadcast the audio signals Higgins records, and it turns the whole world of the set into such blocks and dots. Higgins's scientific and rational and compartmentalised vision of the world becomes Jones's vision of the play, compartmentalising and analysing the characters in every carefully co-ordinated mise-en-scene.
Jones creates a wordless new scene, as we enter Higgins's digs for the first time, that introduces us to Higgins's meticulous, minute and scrupulous way of dividing up the world into a million different sounds and pieces. Behind Carvel's Higgins are his charts compartmentalising the world; behind that are the blocks of the set design whereby Jones compartmentalises it all over again; and in front of all this, Carvel's Higgins points to letters on a board and divides every vowel of the English language into a million sounds. It is an electric and revelatory scene, showing not only how his mind works, but how his whole world works, how civilisation works!
And now Patsy Ferran's unspoiled emotional Eliza must walk into this world of tiny boxes, and be cut up by it as if by a shredder.
Jones coaxes Ferran's Eliza into an almost constant state of childlike emotionalism. Nothing Dockery (2008) or Tointon (2011) or Hiller (1938) did embodied so much pure emotion as what Ferran does. If she's going to be carved by Carvel into a stiff Galatean civilised statue, it is important for Jones that Ferran's Eliza is pure, unspoiled, uncivilised emotionalism, so that he can feed her into Carvel's Higgins's carving machine to be civilised. Jones wants us to feel and see visually what our civilisation is like.
As an astute board member posted above, it is likely that Carvel's Higgins is "on the spectrum," since being on the spectrum is associated with a difficulty in emotionally relating, a propensity to carve the world up into easily digestible boxes, an obsession with understanding everything that comes from this inability to emotionally react the way "normies" do. And yet, even classifying people as "on the spectrum," rather than simply accepting people's individuality and quirks, is proof of how our civilisation itself is "on the spectrum," carving up people into easily digestible boxes.
And the play shows us the price we pay for the boxes we fit into, it shows us the rewards we gain for fitting into the boxes others expect us to, and it shows us how deeply tragic it can be if a compromise between emotionalism and rationality cannot be reached.
Carvel's astonishing performance of a playful mind that can't feel what others feel, and Ferran's astonishing performance of a playful mind that feels everything are instrumental in fulfilling Jones's vision of delivering Shaw's play in a way that is simultaneously faithful to Shaw's class commentary, but also many levels deeper.
5 stars from me.
For me, Richard Jones does the remarkable, which is to present the whole play, without tampering with it to more than an imperceptible degree, and yet add whole additional levels of insight.
Patsy Ferran and Bertie Carvel are fantastic together.
Some spoilers follow. . .
This is the revised version of the play that Shaw wrote, adding the changes he made for the 1938 movie, which is why it's so similar to "My Fair Lady," which they got to work on as soon as Shaw died, in defiance of his wish that it not be turned into a musical lol.
Shaw insisted they cast Wendy Hiller in the 1938 movie, having already used her in a production on stage, so for me, her "Lisson Grove 1912 accent" is a touchstone for what Shaw envisioned the character might sound like, and I felt Patsy Ferran sounds much the same at the beginning of the play.
This is the third production I've seen of this play, and is the richest and most original by far.
The 2011 Garrick version was traditional, except Rupert Everett portrayed Higgins as dour and mean-spirited, rather than the excitable scientist and inventor that Shaw intended (see Leslie Howard in the 1938 film, for example, or read Shaw's notes on the character, that he wrote in response to everybody begging him to turn the story into a romcom). The best thing about the 2011 production was seeing Higgins's fierce mother (Diana Rigg) drip scorn all over Everett's Higgins's bad attitude.
At the Old Vic, in 2008, by contrast, I felt Tim Pigott-Smith was the quintessential Higgins, every bit the playful, excitable but casually superior gentleman that Shaw intended, and Michelle Dockery was the quintessential Eliza, opposite him, vulnerable but becoming a powerful defiant and emotional Galatea. The production was traditional in the best way, everything Shaw intended, no more no less.
This version goes beyond Shaw, without betraying him. It finds an explanation for why Higgins is the way he is. It makes sense of how an essentially decent playful guy can behave so pigheadedly.
And it goes further still, exploring the value of compartmentalised (traditionally masculine) ways of thinking and the value of emotionalism (traditionally feminine) in contrast to rationalism.
The result of this intellectual distance is to move away from judging the characters, towards having compassion for them all, especially for Bertie Carvel's Higgins, who can't help the way he is, and lacks the flexibility of Eliza to change.
How is this achieved?
The set takes the face of the technology Higgins uses to obsess about the world, the blocks and dots of loudspeakers, that broadcast the audio signals Higgins records, and it turns the whole world of the set into such blocks and dots. Higgins's scientific and rational and compartmentalised vision of the world becomes Jones's vision of the play, compartmentalising and analysing the characters in every carefully co-ordinated mise-en-scene.
Jones creates a wordless new scene, as we enter Higgins's digs for the first time, that introduces us to Higgins's meticulous, minute and scrupulous way of dividing up the world into a million different sounds and pieces. Behind Carvel's Higgins are his charts compartmentalising the world; behind that are the blocks of the set design whereby Jones compartmentalises it all over again; and in front of all this, Carvel's Higgins points to letters on a board and divides every vowel of the English language into a million sounds. It is an electric and revelatory scene, showing not only how his mind works, but how his whole world works, how civilisation works!
And now Patsy Ferran's unspoiled emotional Eliza must walk into this world of tiny boxes, and be cut up by it as if by a shredder.
Jones coaxes Ferran's Eliza into an almost constant state of childlike emotionalism. Nothing Dockery (2008) or Tointon (2011) or Hiller (1938) did embodied so much pure emotion as what Ferran does. If she's going to be carved by Carvel into a stiff Galatean civilised statue, it is important for Jones that Ferran's Eliza is pure, unspoiled, uncivilised emotionalism, so that he can feed her into Carvel's Higgins's carving machine to be civilised. Jones wants us to feel and see visually what our civilisation is like.
As an astute board member posted above, it is likely that Carvel's Higgins is "on the spectrum," since being on the spectrum is associated with a difficulty in emotionally relating, a propensity to carve the world up into easily digestible boxes, an obsession with understanding everything that comes from this inability to emotionally react the way "normies" do. And yet, even classifying people as "on the spectrum," rather than simply accepting people's individuality and quirks, is proof of how our civilisation itself is "on the spectrum," carving up people into easily digestible boxes.
And the play shows us the price we pay for the boxes we fit into, it shows us the rewards we gain for fitting into the boxes others expect us to, and it shows us how deeply tragic it can be if a compromise between emotionalism and rationality cannot be reached.
Carvel's astonishing performance of a playful mind that can't feel what others feel, and Ferran's astonishing performance of a playful mind that feels everything are instrumental in fulfilling Jones's vision of delivering Shaw's play in a way that is simultaneously faithful to Shaw's class commentary, but also many levels deeper.
5 stars from me.