By Kevin Donnellan.
On paper Pygmalion in the Abbey is as safe a bet as you can have these days in theatre. A much loved text written by one of Ireland’s most renowned writers and performed for the first time in Ireland’s most illustrious venue. This isn’t one to get the bean-counters quivering in fear on opening night.
It’s only on seeing the actual production that you realise how wrong it could have gone…and how much of a triumph it actually is. Firstly there’s the casting. Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle could both be disastrous in the wrong hands. Higgins could be too aloof, too arrogant. Risteárd Cooper as Higgins is perfect. From the first time he opens his mouth he is completely believable; arrogant but strangely likeable, blunt but not nasty (well not too nasty). For someone who has spent the best part of the last 15 years being Bill O’Herlihy’s surreal alter ego in Aprés Match it’s some achievement. Not because he’s not a fine actor anyway, but because preventing us eegits in the audience thinking ‘okey-doke’ whenever we see him should have been an insurmountable task. But he pulls off the clipped vowel and the ‘dear boys’ of an English gentleman to perfection. His comic timing is put to good use. All of Higgins’ countless good lines are nailed; getting the laughing without ever asking for it. Higgins must be likeable for the play to work but Shaw didn’t make it easy for his actors. Cooper rises to the occasion.
Then there’s is Eliza Doolittle. Where Higgins could be cold and uncaring Doolittle can be shrill or needy. Again, there are plenty of ways she could lose the audiences sympathy. Charlie Murphy strikes the right balance however. At times her voice goes through you. At times you wish she’d shut up. But when we get to the final scene you are rooting for her. That’s as it should be.
The rest of the cast give admirable support, but it’s the set itself that is the best supporting actor. There are plenty of productions where sparse is the watch word when it comes to the set, but that wouldn’t suit Pygmalion. Here it’s lavishly (and ingeniously) designed. You’re mind can wander from the text at times as you survey the contents of bookcases or the items on a desk. The music is restrained but effective, a few humming strings here and there and one beautiful piano solo from Séan Óg Boylan.
The text of the play is treated reverentially (to my glance-over-the-play-in-Easons eye) and does lead to a slight fly in the ointment. It seems to take forever to settle on the ‘bet’ in act two and Doolittle and Higgins’ climatic argument goes round in circles somewhat. Maybe it’s sacrilege to say but a trimming of a few lines might have helped. But that’s a minor complaint about a great production. It took 99 years for Pygmalion to reach the Abbey and it seems to have been worth the wait.
