Pygmalion: Summer Stock Style

Pygmalion was originally supposed to be a winter show, directly following the success of The Importance of Being Earnest the previous fall. Following the casting process, however, the production was delayed eight months by my own extended personal sickness (I would later be diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease). When we finally got back to work August of 2021, I could only get the entire cast together for a week to get the show ready for production. We had a few preliminary rehearsals over the summer, but we basically had to pull a show together in five days, summer stock style.

Having been familiar for most of my life with the Audrey Hepburn-led adaptation of the musical My Fair Lady, I was shocked when I first read George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. While My Fair Lady was framed as a romantic comedy, I perceived the whole point of Pygmalion to be about two people who couldn’t fall in love, strangled by a gaping class divide and Henry Higgins’ savior complex. Therefore, I devised this production to be the very antithesis of the musical adaptation: dark and gritty, devoid of any romantic comedy charm. The set was designed in shades of black and white, and the costumes (designed by Vivian Steele), were muted, lending themselves to a more opaque reimagining of the George Bernard Shaw classic.

The show was a modest success, and we made a small profit. I did, however, learn quite a few lessons from the experience. I learned how to more effectively block a show in a thrust (both from success and error). I learned to improve my time management, getting through a vast amount of material in a very short amount of time. Finally, I learned that even the most dramatic of shows need to have a healthy dose of levity. The material was weighty, my interpretation was even heavier, and I think the audience found it a bit exhausting. If I had incorporated more humor or lightness to balance out the tension of the story, I believe it would have been a more enjoyable theatrical occasion for our audiences.