Frome Drama Club are in rehearsal for their autumn production of Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw.
Well known to most as the musical film My Fair Lady, this is the story of a poor flower girl who is taken in hand by a phonetics expert and introduced to high society.
FDC have invited a guest director, Simon Blacksell, to direct this play for them and he is very excited at the opportunity to direct in the Merlin Theatre and is thrilled with the brilliant cast he has put together.
Simon feels that although set in the 1910s, this play is still relevant to today’s audiences. He says “This is one of Shaw’s wittiest and most relevant plays. Pygmalion is a play about the way men treat women as things and not as people, let alone as equals. It is also about class and the way the working classes are patronised by the upper classes. Shaw makes certain that we are left in no doubt where our sympathies must lie.”
Henry Higgins, played by David Holt, is the Pygmalion figure who accepts a bet that he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his ‘creation’ has a mind of her own. Eliza is played by Anabella Fairgrieve, who has just been awarded best ‘senior young person’ at the Mid-Somerset Festival. Philip de Glanville, well known to Frome audiences, plays Professor Higgin’s sidekick – Colonel Pickering. David and Philip played these roles 20 years ago and are enjoying revisiting them. Laurie Parnell (The Lady in the Van and recently on tour with Shakespeare Live) is Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle.
As well as the director, there are some new faces to FDC– Lynne McCaffrey is playing Mrs Pearce the housekeeper and Beth Dombkowski takes on Clara Eynsford Hill, her brother Freddy, and her mother, Mrs Eynsford Hill are played by FDC regulars Django Lewis-Clark and Suzy Howlett. Professor Higgin’s mother is played by Liz Hollis who too was in the Lady in the Van, and also appearing are David Gatliffe and Joy Osborn.
With an imaginative set designed by Bill Jacques and some lovely costumes organised by Gillie Richardson, this production will be very different from the familiar My Fair Lady (no singing!) and seeks to bring out the humour of the situations and point up the relevance of the play to today’s audience. Ever since Pygmalion opened in London in April 1914 it has proved a very controversial play, from the (then) shocking language, to arguments about its correct ending. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor, Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw’s feminist views.
Pygmalion is at The Merlin Theatre 22nd – 24th November. Tickets £10/8 from box office on 465949
Pictured above: Cast members Laurie Parnell, Anabella Fairgrieve, Philip de Glanville and David Holt. Below: Guest director Simon Blacksell.
