A Utah Theater Review by Ben Christensen
My post-college reintroduction to theater came via a role in a 2012 production of My Fair Lady, so I was excited to see another interpretation of the familiar story in Echo Theatre’s production of Pygmalion. In case you aren’t familiar with Pygmalion, it is the play upon which My Fair Lady is based—the story of Cockney-speaking flower girl Eliza Doolittle who is trained to be a proper lady by linguist Henry Higgins. The story delves into themes of class, personal autonomy and human relationships, and in my opinion these themes are explored more deeply in the original play than in its musical successor. Echo Theatre’s production, directed by Jason Sullivan, does a fine job of treating these complex themes while engaging and entertaining the audience.
Stephen Geis as Professor Higgins is rude, condescending, and misogynistic—as he should be. He is an utter jerk (to use a tamer word than Higgins himself would), and yet you can’t help feeling a little bad for him because he simply doesn’t understand people, particularly when those people happen to be women. Opposite Geis in the other lead role is Alice Johnson as Eliza Doolittle. Johnson is energetic and charismatic, even when her character is whiny and annoying. She handles the transition from flower girl to duchess well, including the awkward transitional stage where Eliza knows the right things to say and how to pronounce them properly, but comes across as a child playing dress-up, with the flower girl hovering just below the surface of the lady.
A strong supporting cast also helps bring the play to life. Leisl Cope as Clara Eynsford-Hill is a spoiled brat, and Jordan Kramer plays her brother Freddy Eynsford-Hill perfectly as a cheerful ditz. Rounding out the Eynsford-Hill family is Mary Garlitz, who played Mrs. Higgins in Spanish Fork’s My Fair Lady and does a great job of playing snooty Mrs. Eynsford-Hill in Pygmalion. This production’s Mrs. Higgins, Jenny Eckton, is dignified and radiates power, as you would expect of the obnoxious professor’s mother. Similarly, Ashley Grant holds her own against Higgins as his strong-willed housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce. Lindsey Palmer is unobtrusive as Mrs. Higgins’ parlor maid, but her character really stood out to me in the opening scene where she plays an unnamed friend of Eliza. Curtis Adams delivers a delightful Cockney as the middle-class philosopher Alfred Doolittle, father to Eliza. Finally, Robert Holcombe demonstrates the heart that Higgins lacks in his role as Higgins’ fellow linguist and conscience, Colonel Pickering.
In a play where accents are central to the plot, it’s important to get them right, and at least to my amateur ear the actors managed the different early 20th-century British accents well. Several actors stumbled over lines now and then, but hopefully those were just opening-night jitters, and in each case the actor recovered quickly without hurting the flow of the play; Geis was a notable exception, delivering long, complex lines with hardly a conspicuous mistake. Since Pygmalion is a straight play without the catchy musical numbers that carry My Fair Lady through the very cerebral subject matter, and the plot relies more heavily on dialogue than action, there’s a danger of the pace dragging, but this production does a good job of keeping the audience’s attention through snappy delivery of the lines, well-choreographed movement, and quick scene changes. Each scene has a handful of key pieces to create a distinct setting and the actors move these on and off in brief blackouts. The only thing I found odd about the scenery was the lack of doorknob on the door used to enter and exit the various scenes. Although the stage is small, the theater is large enough that actors’ voices could easily get lost if they didn’t project well, but I’m happy to report I heard every line clearly.
Speaking of the small stage, both Geis and Kramer seemed to be wearing enough eye makeup for a much larger stage where distance from the audience would require more exaggerated lines. On Kramer it just emphasizes the fact that his character is basically eye-candy, but on Geis it’s a little distracting and out of character. The makeup on the other actors was more appropriate for the small stage. The costumes were well done too; although Eckton’s boots struck me as not period-appropriate, they added to the character’s powerful stage presence.
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Especially if you are a fan of My Fair Lady but even if you’ve never seen it, there’s a lot to enjoy in Echo Theatre’s production of Pygmalion. The actors are charming, the dialogue is witty, and the story is thought-provoking.
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