`Pygmalion': A Comedy, Sure, But . . .

-------------- THEATER REVIEW --------------

"Pygmalion," by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Matt Sweeney. At Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Ave. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., through April 22. One Sunday performance, 7 p.m., April 16. Under 18 admitted free. 324-5801.

It is nearly impossible to separate George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" from the musical it spawned, "My Fair Lady." One keeps expecting cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle to burst out with "I Could Have Danced All Night," or crusty Professor Henry Higgins to deliver an elocution lesson via "The Rain in Spain." And one keeps waiting for the musical's romantic resolution, an ending that Shaw dangled teasingly in front of his audiences, but ultimately yanked away with one final bruising insult.

The fact is, Shaw's play is much darker than the charming "My Fair Lady." It is indeed a comedy, brimming with social satire and keen wit, but it's dark nonetheless - and in Theater Schmeater's production, that darkness is felt in large part thanks to William L. Houts, whose rumpled Higgins is brash, rude, condescending, peevish and very funny.

The play is lengthy, and under Matt Sweeney's direction shows a tendency to plod instead of lope. Sweeney does, however, have a good eye for the superficialities of social interplay, as evidenced during a hilarious scene in which the partly transformed Eliza pays a call on Higgins' mother. To the group's horror and fascination,

Eliza natters on about her drunken old aunt's untimely death, leaving the offspring of the stuffy Mrs. Eynsford Hill (Michele Dunn) gleefully convinced that a new style of small talk has come into vogue.

The red-haired Sharon MacMenamin is a winningly elfin Eliza. She endows Eliza with a steely dignity and ably handles the tricky linguistics that accompany her character's transition from a "guttersnipe" to an elegant, well-spoken woman.

Michael Patten's Colonel Pickering is an essentially good-hearted gent whose upper-crust fastidiousness provides an excellent foil for Houts' manic Higgins.

Alis Parris is the voice of conscience as Higgins' calm, kindly mother, while Jim Gall, done up in bushy brows and sideburns, is a comic delight in the role of Eliza's shrewd, tippling father. Convinced that the "undeserving poor" have all the fun, Alfred Doolittle goes kicking and screaming into the middle class, moaning about "middle-class morality" and the dull respectability that money brings.

By choosing to bring "Pygmalion" rather than "My Fair Lady" to its stage, Theater Schmeater has laid bare once again Shaw's astute skewering of society's obsession with class and identity. For all his egalitarian talk, Higgins is as pigheaded as they come; by seeing Eliza as object instead of person, he loses something he only vaguely realizes is precious, without every really understanding why.