By Martin Brady
Nashville Scene, September 20, 2000

ACT I fired among the first shots of Nashville's fall 2000 theater season last weekend, debuting the company's first-ever production of a play by George Bernard Shaw. The choice, Pygmalion, is a good one for a variety of reasons.

It's a helluva script, of course, one of Shaw's best-which is saying a lot considering the master's considerable output. The plot, characters, and sublime language hold up exceedingly well for a work that dates from 1916. In addition, Shaw's remarkable didacticism-something he quite controversially insisted was the purview of any good play-finds bold expression in Pygmalion's subtextual discussion of class distinctions, a discussion that actually presages the demise of the nobility and the rise of the middle class. Finally, and best of all, ACT I has assembled a cast perfectly suited to the task of offering adept characterizations without missing a single nuance of oh-so-comedic Shavian wit.

"What is life but a series of inspired follies?" gushes phonetics expert Henry Higgins as he hatches one of British drama's most famous plots: to transform coarse cockney flower vendor Eliza Doolittle into a well-spoken lady whose demeanor and diction could never betray her lower-class origins. Eliza's successful metamorphosis is not simply a point of Higgins' pride: He's also got a bet going with his linguistics comrade Colonel Pickering, who seems to relish losing the wager, since it's so deliciously curious to watch Higgins put Eliza through her paces.

Higgins has been cautioned by both his housekeeper Mrs. Pearce and by hisown mother that tampering with Eliza's personhood will have consequences. Imperious and arrogant, Higgins is unmoved and can find no compassionate response to Eliza when she wails-now in the dulcet tones of the King's English-"What's to become of me?" Still a "guttersnipe" at heart, our heroine is all dressed up like a lady but with nowhere to go. Mustering all the paternalistic sexism he can, Higgins denies Eliza's feelings, dubs her an ingrate, calls her "impudent slut" and "little fool," and threatens to cast her out of his house and down among the heathens. It takes most of the lengthy-and possibly excessive-final act for the two to sort out what it all means, with Eliza certainly gaining more in the way of growth and self-esteem. Higgins is essentially unchanged, ever the committed bachelor, though he does admit to a certain fondness in having Eliza around. Those who would hope that love blooms after the curtain falls are referred to an essay Shaw wrote subsequently in response to this very question. In short: not bloody likely. (Indeed, in Shaw's original play, we learn more about Higgins' Oedipus complex than the popular musical version My Fair Lady ever hinted at.)

Roseanne Cornbrooks' direction of this production is sure-handed in every way. Besides fostering an agreeable pacing, she most importantly affirms Shaw's brilliant and bitingly satiric text, his characters emerging as microcosmic players in the post-turn-of-the-20th-century class struggle. Eliza takes what she is given, comes to respect good manners, and seeks independence. Higgins claims to be beyond class, yet his rigid intellectual omniscience betrays him (though he's certainly more interesting than your garden-variety insensitive snob). And Eliza's father, the glib dustman Alfred Doolittle, renders Shaw's sharpest societal critiques in his brilliant declarations. At one point, he states that, being a member of the "undeserving poor," he can't afford morals; later, when he comes into money, he moans that he has lost all freedom since he has been "shoved into the middle class."

Cornbrooks' cast of 12 is nothing less than stellar, with all the right people in the right roles. As Eliza, Sharon Collins is by turns fiery and genteel, humorous and sympathetic, and her cockney accent is spot-on. Rick Seay as Higgins is her poetic equal, and he courageously budges not an inch toward the sentimental. (Higgins is, of necessity, a thankless role.) Bob O'Connell's senior Doolittle is frighteningly good-understated, smirkingly lucid, and happily devoid of the bombast one often sees in the role. Weldon Stice would appear to have been born to play Pickering, so appropriate are his look and gentlemanliness. Also of note are Mancia Davis as the sober, dutiful Mrs. Pearce, and Penny Waller as the worldly-wise Mrs. Higgins. Lest others be overlooked: Rick Harrell's costumes are quite nice, Warren Stiles' lighting design is warmly appropriate, and Anthony Catalano does a commendable job taking the Darkhorse Theater stage from Covent Garden to Mrs. Higgins' drawing room.