Pygmalion

November 13, 2025

In their latest, Shaw’s ever-popular "Pygmalion," Staller has staged Shaw’s never-used prologue created for the 1938 film version which has the gods and goddesses on Mt. Olympus recount to the modern audience the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea which inspired Shaw’s Edwardian comedy. The set by Lindsay G. Fuori creates an Al Hirschfeld-inspired Greek temple used for all of the play’s five scenes. Four of the actors dressed in white Grecian robes (courtesy of designer Tracy Christensen) greet us and tell us the myth that we will see in Shaw’s updated 20th century comedy in which the sculptor becomes a professor of language and linguistics and the statue becomes a flower girl who wants to improve her speech well enough to get a job in a flower shop. However, Staller does not stop there but has created narrative introductions for each act which is rather intrusive though it may help some first-time viewers to understand the play. (Is there any theatergoer who has not seen the play’s musical version My Fair Lady on stage or screen?) [more]

Bedlam’s Persuasion

September 29, 2021

Bedlam’s 2014 production of "Sense and Sensibility," adapted by Kate Hamil from the novel by Jane Austen, and directed by Eric Tucker, set the bar so high for cleverness, originality and wit that we have come to expect this level of expectation from all of their future offerings. Unfortunately, their stage version of Austen’s last novel "Persuasion," a tale of mature love and second chances by first time playwright Sarah Rose Kearns, does not work as well. Among the problems are so much doubling and tripling that it becomes difficult to keep the characters separate and a lack of humor and irony that was inherent in the original material. Tucker seems to have forgotten that this should be a comedy of manners. [more]

My Fair Lady (Lincoln Center Theater)

May 14, 2018

With an enormous painted backdrop depicting London and featuring St. Paul’s Cathedral and a lamppost (the glorious sets have been designed by Michael Yeargan), the musical begins as Covent Garden pivots into view on a revolving stage. Though, from the moment that we see him in the opening scene, Hadden-Paton seems too young as Higgins in comparison to Rex Harrison, who originated the part, he is actually closer in age to Shaw’s intentions. He also sings more melodically than Harrison, who famously song-spoke his way through the role. Though Ambrose’s voice seems weak at first (“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”), it gains in strength and stature as she proceeds. [more]

Bedlam’s Pygmalion

April 4, 2018

Scenic designer John McDermott has turned the black box space at the Sheen Center into an intimate amphitheater with the audience sitting around three sides of Higgins’ laboratory/study with no viewer more than four rows from the action. When Eliza arrives to arrange for lessons on her small income, we discover what we already suspected: this Eliza has been born in India and she is prone to speak in Hindi when she gets excited, just like her father Alfred Doolittle does when he follows her to Wimpole Street to see what he can get out of her good fortune - when she sends for her things but not her clothes. This adds a new, contemporary level to the play: Eliza is an immigrant rather than an East End cockney which contributes to the play’s current relevance. [more]