Pygmalion and My Fair Lady: wouldn't it be a loverly musical?

My Fair Lady and Pygmalion: a play born for musical theatre

For a story so concerned with sound, speech and communication, it’s no wonder George Bernard Shaw’s play works so naturally as a musical. 

George Bernard Shaw’s wonderful 1913 comedy Pygmalion was made for musical theatre. It’s a play so preoccupied with language and communication - the sounds, the methodologies of codifying language (the language we use to write languages’ rules), modes of non-verbal communication, miscommunications, translations and so on. In other words, it’s a celebration of everything language can do, as well as everything it can’t. 

And so Bernard Shaw gives us a play. He gives us spoken word, communication through not only speech and dialogue but also in gestures and expressions, costume and make-up, stagecraft and props. Bernard Shaw is also infamous for his disregard for grammar and punctuation, and Pygmalion is no exception; there’s hardly a comma or capital letter in sight. In short, Pygmalion couldn’t explore the wonders of language and communication in a more comprehensive way. Except perhaps it could. And that’s where the fabulous My Fair Lady takes centre stage. As a musical theatre production, My Fair Lady explores all the same modes and examples of communication as the Bernard Shaw play, but also integrates another essential form of communication: music. 

You don’t need to be a genius to work out that music does something particularly special when it comes to communication. It is a language of its own, both literally and figuratively. It has its nuances, its miscommunications - but most importantly it is another means of communication. Music attempts to bridge some gap between people. As we sing along to a song together with strangers in the supermarket we make connections, when we tune a radio station because a song we like happens to be playing we share that moment when everyone else tuned in. Music is a great unifying force. 

But back to this musical connection between My Fair Lady and Pygmalion. What better way to explore the space in our lives that is occupied by, fuelled by, enriched by language than through song? A bold question, which makes many assumptions, but you’ll forgive me if I say that I fully believe music does have something magic in it. 

Music has many faces, many meanings, many voices. Theatre has the same. And so aside from being charming musical pieces in their own right, collectively the songs of My Fair Lady give flight to the story’s wider interest in languages’ various forms. Subject matters of the songs range from the inane and comic to the heartfelt and impassioned. ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain’ is a nonsense statement, really, but it comes at a pivotal moment in the story when Higgins believes he’s finally cracked the case of the Cockney flower-girl. At last, she’s a lady! It’s an exaltation in a moment of disbelief at their success. Later, the enamoured Freddy Eynsford-Hill sings a love ballad to his darling, not caring that he’s been left to stand outside so long as he ‘can be here on the street where you live.’ 

My Fair Lady’s musical numbers give voice to a great range of thoughts and feelings. Where words will merely suffice, why not sing? Why not become caught up in that magic?