“Pygmalion” at the Black Box Performing Arts Center in Englewood: An Epiphany into What “My Fair Lady” Was All About

Jan 16, 2020 by Susan Rosenbluth

By Susan L. Rosenbluth

If you grew up with images of “My Fair Lady” starring Rex Harrison in the role of Professor Henry Higgins, the current production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” the play on which “My Fair Lady” is based, at the Black Box Performing Arts Center in Englewood, may come as a shock, maybe even an epiphany.

In the hands of director Matt Okin, the Black Box’s founder and artistic director, Professor Henry Higgins (Michael Gardiner) is anything but charming. He is, by turns, eccentric to the point of bizarre, rude bordering on vulgar, and tone-deaf, quite devoid of social graces (and proud of it) and oblivious to the nuances of any social situation. He seems to be in constant motion, even when he is sitting still. In short, he is the breathtaking heart of the show.

While all the familiar characters from the Lerner and Loewe musical are in the play, the important scenes are not the vehicles for the action that the musical places front and center. In the musical, the process of the effort to wrench proper English pronunciation from Eliza Doolittle’s original cockney accent is all important. In the play, after a brief introductory scene in which Higgins and his friend and colleague, Colonel Pickering (Laurence Wallace) discuss how they intend to teach her, Miss Doolittle (Kathryn Anne Mario) emerges full-blown at the home of Higgins’s mother (Ellen Revesz) as a woman whose sophisticated accent and lower-class subjects of conversation have not yet gelled.

Two Experiments

There is no scene at the Ascot Racecourse, no ball at which Eliza shines, and no hint at how Eliza has gone from hating her teacher (“Just You Wait, Henry Higgins”) to falling in love with him (“I Could Have Danced All Night”).

Instead, the play focuses on two experiments: the socio-linguistic accomplishment that implies lives can be changed by patterns of speech and behavior and the expectations that accompany these outward traits; and the morality play epitomized by Alfred Doolittle (Zach Abraham) and the Eynsford-Hill family, the matriarch (Sean Mannix), her daughter, Clara (Ilana Schimmel), and her son, Freddy (Kentrell Loftin).

Alfred and the Eynsford-Hills are all indigent, but while Alfred occupies the lowest rung on the Edwardian social ladder, the Eynsford-Hills, who speak and behave like members of the upper class, are accepted as such. Doolittle is not above pretending parental interest in his daughter in order to separate Higgins from some cash, something the Eynsford-Hills would never dream of doing. However, unlike the Eynsford-Hills, Doolittle would never pretend to be something he isn’t.

Doolittle’s unabashed honesty and pleasure in being part of the “undeserving poor,” (undeserving not in the sense that he doesn’t deserve to be poor, but rather that he does nothing that would make anyone think that he deserves any better) intrigues Higgins, who, as a prank, recommends him as the “most original moralist in England” to the rich American founder of the Moral Reform Societies. When the philanthropist dies, he leaves Doolittle a significant pension and, thus, thrusts him up from the unwashed into the arms of the middle class and its concomitant morality.

The Eynsford-Hills’ only hope of emerging from poverty might be for Freddy to marry Eliza who, with her newly learned linguistic skills and good manners, might be able to work in a flower shop and, thus, support the family.

No Happy Ending

The one person in the play who understands entirely what Eliza will be up against is Higgins’ mother. It is she who is aghast at her son’s parlor game with a human life in the balance, an entertainment for him that has left Eliza with few choices. However, Mrs. Higgins is drawn as just traditional enough to be the ideal mother-in-law for Eliza.

Like the protagonist in the Greek myth for which the play was named, Higgins, a man with a declared distaste for women, creates for himself the perfect woman. Pygmalion sculpts her out of ivory; Higgins produces her phonetically and behaviorally. Both fall in love with their own handiwork.

While the original Broadway show and the film based on it left no doubt that the story ends with Eliza and the professor together, maybe even living happily ever after, that was not Shaw’s intention. The original play (like the most recent production of the musical at Lincoln Center) ends much more ambiguously.

Cutting-Edge Theater

At the Black Box, it is never quite clear where we are. The accents are straight out of Victorian London, but the costumes and music are counter-culture hip-hop with a touch of Grunge. The Black Box program tells us that the first act takes place in a London nightclub (not the portico outside Covent Garden, as in Shaw’s play), and the second act is in Higgins’ recording studio (not his elegant Upper Wimpole Street mansion). Mrs. Higgins’ drawing room is transformed into a “VIP Lounge.”

The show, which will run through Sunday, January 26^th, with performances on Thursday and Saturday evenings at 8 and Sundays at 2, is Black Box’s first main stage production of 2020. The theater is located at 49 East Palisade Avenue in Englewood. Tickets can be bought online at http://www.blackboxpac.com/pygmalion or by calling 201-569-2070.

This production of “Pygmalion” demonstrates why Englewood’s Black Box is emerging as one of the Tri-State area’s premiere destinations for both cutting-edge professional theater and collaborative performing arts education, including acting classes for children, teens, and adults, improv training, comedy workshops, writing programs, and private lessons.

The Black Box is a cultural treasure we’re lucky to have so close to home.