Theatre

Peter Hall is a prolific director who once in a while strikes gold. And, by George, he hits the jackpot here. Admittedly, he does nothing to help the dodgy first act in which playwright Bernard Shaw struggles to bring the upper classes and cockneys together as if in some London theme park. Then there’s the fact that several of the scenes feel like party turns demanding a round of applause. But what he does  triumphantly, with the same precision as Henry Higgins pins down a dialect, is to get to the heart of the perils of one person transforming another, of Higgins’s determination to turn a flower girl into a duchess without giving a fig for the consequences.  

The revelatory production starts to cook when Michelle Dockery’s Eliza first arrives at Higgins’s home demanding elocution lessons. Tim Pigott-Smith as the professor, performing with a greater freedom than I’ve ever seen in him before, dances with diabolical joy at the thought of transforming her. Dockery’s face speaks volumes as she eats her first chocolate and wrestles with a combination of suspicion, bad teeth and finally sheer pleasure. Little does she know the rocky road she is about to embark on and the dangers of being transformed into someone else’s toy, a progress that Dockery brilliantly depicts every inch of the way.

‘My Fair Lady’ notoriously ignored Shaw’s instructions and insisted on a romantic ending. Hall’s production makes you realise that such a fate would be disastrous for Eliza. In a stupendous final scene, the two actors rise above Shaw’s garrulousness as Eliza discovers her independence and Higgins realises too late that he has feelings he can only half acknowledge. Although it’s painful to watch, Dockery makes it clear that Eliza has to leave, just as Nora does in ‘The Doll’s House’. For once, the play trumps its more famous successor.