Talk about culture shock. For those us who have never read or seen a staged version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion but know the movie My Fair Lady, based in that play, the Gate theatre’s current production will come as one hell of an eye-opener, in terms of its sexual politics, if nothing else.
Loathe as I am to give away the ending of any work, let’s just say that even though the movie may chauvinistically end with the character of Professor Henry Higgins telling his protégé Eliza Doolittle to “fetch my slippers”, that command is the polar opposite of the polemical point of view early 20th century feminist Shaw sends out in the last act of his play. That’s why the playwright was so angry at the original film version of Pygmalion – and presumably My Fair Lady. His original ending is also more acceptable to late 20th century Irish feminist Jeananne Crowley who plays Mrs Eynsford-Hill in the Gate’s magnificently evocative and provocative production.
“To me, one of the themes of the play is what man and woman could be like if this man-is-my-lord-and-master nonsense was broken down”” she says. “And George Bernard Shaw actually wrote a whole back-story about the Eynsford-Hills in which Eliza does marry Freddie Eynsford-Hill. He doesn’t marry in her in the play. At the end of the play Professor Higgins says, ‘She’s going to marry Freddie’ and roars with laughter. But Hollywood wanted a happy ending, with Eliza marrying Professor Higgins, and Shaw was absolutely relentless and said ‘no’ and explained how she would marry Freddie instead and he would take care of her and she would have a flower shop, which is not how the movie ends at all. In fact, in the play, Professor Higgins rails at Eliza for getting his slippers, he says, ‘You shouldn’t do it.’ He tries to establish the New Woman, the Fabian Society woman, what men and women could have with each other if that other nonsense was abandoned. And you must remember that Shaw wrote this play even before women had the vote. He was angling for a relationship between Eliza, Professor Higgins and Colonel Bickering that would make them equals. He says, ‘we’ll be three old bachelors together.’ Shaw is working toward that in the last act of his play.”
But not in the movie, as Crowley points out. She also knows that most women, or men, who have an sense of sexual politics, might be put off the play by the film. That would be a mistake, she acknowledges. Even in relation to the songs – “beautiful as they are” – that were stitched into My Fair Lady and Lerner and Lowe, such as ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face’, ‘On The Street Where You Live’ and the tellingly-titled ‘Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?’ which, in the main, are sexist.
‘They are” says Jeananne.” And they are so anti what Shaw meant in the original play that they, ultimately, betray him at that level. But we do love the songs so much that we almost forgive what they are saying. And there is one point in the play where Higgins says ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her voice’ and you almost expect someone to start singing ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’. But what is amazing is that although people of, say, 20, may barely have heard of My Fair Lady, they never heard of Pygmalion and probably confuse George Bernard Shaw with Charles Stewart Parnell, which is easy done, I guess!”
Not after you see Pygmalion, one hastens to add. And another thing that’s great about this particular production at the Gate, claims Crowley, is the cast, which includes Stephen Brennan (pictured left with Alan Stanford), Dawn Bradfield Susan Fitzgerald and Mark Long. Jeananne also suggests that Michael Fitzgerald who plays her son is a superb young actor.” Better still, Crowley herself, who discovered theatre the night she went to see The Importance of Being Oscar, at the Gate when she was a girl is most definitely getting as much of a buzz in this particular production as she did that night she first saw Michael MacLiammoir.
‘But playing Mrs Eynford-Hill is tinged with nostalgia for me, in that sense” she says, “because I’m now moving into the next phase of my acting life, playing a mother! But this is a lovely way to do it, in Pygmalion, with these two beautiful young people playing my children, even through they are adults. So, in many ways, appearing in Pygmalion is a pure delight.”
And it shows on stage, Jeananne.

Pygmalion is running at the Gate until September