"PYGMALION" AT TOP HAT
posted by James Reel
Top Hat Theatre Club doesn't invite critics to its performances, because when it was starting out its artistic director decided that the company's growing pains needn't be documented online for all to see, forever. So I haven't been keeping up with what Top Hat does, but a friend of mine, a savvy theatergoer, has returned from its new production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion with this report:
This play is much more than the play which inspired My Fair Lady. IMHO Bernard Shaw set the standard for theater and music criticism. He liked what he called "a well made play," and when he wrote plays he followed his own admonitions. Pygmalion is decidedly well made, and fun, too, and the actors do it justice. James Gooden, artistic director of Top Hat Theatre, respects and admires Shaw, and it shows in this production and in his performance as Henry Higgins. Tony Eckstat turns in one of his best performances, as Pickering; and Bruce Bieszki was born to be Alfred Doolittle. Nell Summers does Eliza proud. (Even knowing what was coming I jumped when Alfred startles Eliza by appearing where and when she least expects him.) Elizabeth Gooden is a convincingly proper housekeeper for Higgins; and Sarah MacMillan as his mother, convinces us that she love and respects him, but views with some justified alarm the prospect of his presence at her "at home." Mike Saxon is a good surprise as Freddy. Allison Allison Bauer and Char Purrington, as Freddy's sister and mother, fulfill their roles. Edgar Burton and Bruce Purrington as Covent Garden stall keepers help establish English class society well. The actors do well by English accents, too. Americans tend to work too hard at this and talk too fast; in this production they suggest the accents without being unintelligible. The Top Hat production of Pygmalion is a treat.
