Pygmalion

  • 2013/2014 Season
  • [New Translation]
    Performed in Japanese
  • PLAYHOUSE

November-December, 2013

  NNTT presents Pygmalion, the play that formed the basis of the worldwide hit musical, My Fair Lady.
  The play, by Nobel prize-winner George Bernard Shaw, is based on the Greek legend of the sculptor Pygmalion of Cyprus. Pygmalion premiered in 1913 at Vienna's Hofburg Theatre; in 1914, it played at His Majesty's Theatre in London.
  The character of Eliza appears here in the guise of an independent woman. In the last scene, Eliza leaves Professor Higgins to be with Freddy, a good man with little money but who loves her. This is radically different from the romantic ending of My Fair Lady, in which Eliza ultimately comes back to Higgins.
  The original, which is subtitled A Romance in Five Acts, charts the emotional growth of a lone woman and satirizes the society its characters inhabit. Pygmalion will be directed by Miyata Keiko, who brought fresh insight to the Hedda character when she directed Hedda Gabler. It will be fascinating to see what Miyata does with this romantic comedy, which is told from the cynical perspective of George Bernard Shaw.

SYNOPSIS

  Eliza is a flower girl from a working-class area of London. One day, she meets Higgins, a professor of linguistics. An authority on phonetics, Higgins has an amazing ability to know where a person comes from just by hearing them talk. He is put off by Eliza's dreadful accent and rough manner; he tells her in no uncertain terms that if nothing is done, she will be stuck at the bottom of the social scale her whole life. But, he claims, if she will work with him, he can turn her into a lady fit for high society.
  The next day, Eliza goes to Higgins and asks him to teach her to speak. Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering see this as a chance to conduct an interesting experiment; they plan to have Eliza make her debut at a ball, and the two bet on whether she will be able to hide her humble origins. Higgins has Eliza move in and agrees to look after her needs.
  Eliza toils at her lessons and becomes more of a lady than Higgins or Pickering had expected. Her appearance at the ball is a huge success, but the tale hardly ends there.

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