Pygmalion at The Old Vic review: Frantic and frequently exhausting

The story of Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle has been around so long it’s as comfy as the slippers cunning linguist Higgins gets exasperated about being unable to find. Or at least it was until now. This revival of Pygmalion at The Old Vic undercuts the comfiness in often disconcerting ways and moves at such a frantic pace it’s frequently exhausting.

You may have read or seen the play by George Bernard Shaw, which dates back to 1913. You’ve probably seen the My Fair Lady musical film starring a luminous Audrey Hepburn. If you get out much you may have also seen the stage show on which the film was based.

Here, director Richard Jones doesn’t adhere too closely to any previous takes on the material. The plot is the same: Higgins plucks guttersnipe flower girl Eliza from Covent Garden on a bet that he can turn her into a duchess fit for upper class London society. Shaw’s text, much of which was lifted verbatim for both the stage and film musical, hasn’t been tampered with. But the tone is skewered and I can’t fathom why.

“The music is plonked out on a piano that needs tuning”

I can, however, tell you how. A story set in drawing rooms and high society is played out against garish metal backdrops which class with the theatre’s ornate proscenium arch, with furnishings that are plush in places and spartan in others. The lighting is sometimes blindingly bright. Pygmalion’s costumes vary from authentic Victoriana to pantsuits and cloche hats. And the music! Oh my pained ears! The music is plonked out on a piano that needs tuning. Think Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut without the orgies.

The lines still land, thank goodness. And the brilliance of Shaw’s writing means what could now be viewed as a grooming scenario was ahead of its time in painting the male characters as mostly buffoons. Higgins’ disapproving mother talks about “infinitely stupid male creatures” and exits bemoaning “Men! Men! Men!”

As one of those imbecilic males Bertie Carvel is all bragging and buffoonery. He’s a gifted actor but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the character except take the mickey out of a straight man who can recite 130 vowel sounds – which he does in one tortuous early scene – but is clueless when it comes to the opposite sex.

Sylvestra Le Touzel is less frantic than Higgins’ weary mother and John Marquez is scene-stealingly funny as Eliza’s father. Then there’s Pasty Ferran as Eliza herself. I had high hopes after seeing her in A Streetcar Named Desire and at first they were dashed by her dippy physicality and screeching Cockney accent.

Thankfully, as the refined lady who comes to realise Henry hasn’t so much improved her as rendered her placeless she’s a marvel of poise that crumbles into anger. She shifts toward subtlety in a production that otherwise doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

Pygmalion is at The Old Vic theatre, London, until 28 October. Get tickets here