George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is chiefly known nowadays as the basis for the Lerner and Loewe musical, My Fair Lady ( a project its author opposed until his death in 1950 ) . But Shaw had made a number of changes in his play since its premiere in 1912, making Apple Tree director William Brown's decision to set its action in 1935 a perfectly legitimate choice.
To be sure, London society after World War I was a far more flexible institution than it was at the twilight of the British empire. The social barriers Professor Higgins proposes to flout had been rendered considerably less formidable, and those clinging to them now viewed increasingly as relics of an antiquated system rather than representative of the status quo-- thus diminishing, for example, the impact of Eliza's uttering, at one point, an epithet that had shattered the censorship laws 20 years earlier.
As flat-out romantic comedy, however, the reduction of Shaw's universe to simple upper-class/lower-class tensions certainly facilitates its accessibility to American audiences, allowing the relationship between teacher and pupil to dominate the story of a street peddler transformed into a member of the bon ton through manipulation of her speech patterns. This aspect is also presented with an eye toward yankee values, with Henry Higgins' academic myopia revealing him to be as much a misfit as Eliza Doolittle's slum upbringing.
So if Kate Fry's characteristically elvish Eliza is no lady, neither is Daniel J. Travanti's egotistical Higgins a gentleman. Those accolades belong to his colleague, Colonel Pickering, his housekeeper, Mrs. Pierce, and his mother, the Dowager Mrs. Higgins-- personalities usually played as fussy old foozles, but as portrayed by, respectively, Roger Mueller, Elaine Carlson and Ann Whitney, emerge as wise counsellors well aware of the responsibilities that accompany privilege.
Their unforced courtesy contrasts with the strained artifice of the genteel-poor Einsford-Hill family, reproduced to perfection by Judith Hoppe, Brian Gill and especially Molly Glynn Hammond, as is the genial amorality of Doolittle Paterfamilias by the protean Bill McGough. And if this production's technical design sometimes imposes a slightly candy-box ambiance on Shaw's sharp-witted satire, the results nevertheless emerge satisfying, both intellectually and emotionally.