"...this performance somehow manages to keep this relatively old play fresh with outstanding acting, comic relief, and relevant commentary."
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“ ‘Pygmalion’ is a classic, and perhaps doesn’t need much doing to it. This production certainly doesn’t challenge its original message but it’s a succinct and entertaining celebration of a much-loved masterpiece.”
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"Staged in its original form with big stars Patsy Ferran and Bertie Carvel as the leads, this play is harder to love – somehow, it feels more obvious that its funniest lines are at the expense of a working-class woman who dares to step out of line..It’s a play that’s ripe for pulling apart and reimagining by a feminist director. For now, it feels like a curious thing: a glass showcase for Carvel and Ferran to fill with towering, uneasy displays of acting elan."
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"All in all, it’s an incredibly frustrating evening, a wasted revival of a play that for all its old-fashioned notions, still speaks resonantly – and impeccably – to the modern age."
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"The two stars [Bertie Carvel and Patsy Ferran] dominate amid a fine supporting cast, even if this is a weird choice of revival"
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"Jones has everyone moving constantly around the whole stage, so the production always looks busy, ants under a magnifying glass. But he’s doing to ‘Pygmalion’ what Higgins does to Eliza: treating it like an experiment. We’re left with an exercise in ‘Pygmalion’ which, for all its detail, forgets about the heart, the humour and, crucially, the humanity."
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"True, the bittersweet final third of Richard Jones’s characteristically capering production finds some of the grace and sting excluded from the preceding hour-plus. Yet by then you’ve been shouted at for so long by outsized characters trying so hard to be funny that it’s almost as if a fresh play has started. It is a loud and insistent evening."
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"With the writing and direction equally impressive, this would be an impressive show in itself… if it wasn’t for the performances of Patsy Ferran and Bertie Carvel. These two powerhouse performances take this production of 'Pygmalion' and turn it into something truly unmissable. This mesmerising production is full of complete joy and is a complete triumph."
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