BWW Boston Review: BEDLAM'S PYGMALION
BWW Boston Review: BEDLAM'S PYGMALION
tapfrog
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/16/06
#2BWW Boston Review: BEDLAM'S PYGMALION
Posted: 2/8/19 at 7:16pm
Didn't realize this was playing in Boston! Good for them. I saw it in NY and thought it was nothing short of genius. Easily my favorite Bedlam production, which is saying a lot given that I've liked all 5 that I've seen (even the more poorly-reviewed ones).
One thought though, in the review:
"My sense is that there's more than enough food for thought and entertainment with the original issues of class and gender, and the addition of race to the mix is not really addressed."
I definitely disagree with that. They may not hit us over the head with it, but it's implicitly addressed in the context of modern day. Part of the issue is that our sense of class in 2018 is very different than it was back then, and I think making Eliza Indian was a very effective move. Given that London today has a very large Indian population, and also the rampant xenophobia both there and here in the US, we see a more contemporary portrayal of how class can intersect with race, and the consequences of that intersection. Similarly, the notion that one's speech is inextricable from their class is somewhat outdated (we see some examples of it today, but it wasn't the same dealbreaker it was in Shaw's world). So changing the cockney accent to a foreign dialect makes the exploration of the "other" through speech more fresh and immediate for modern audiences. And IMO, it achieved all of this very elegantly, without resorting to a lot of "wink wink - look how relevant we are" shenanigans that so many modern productions are prone to.
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