Come Here To Me!

An honest and natural slum dialect is more tolerable than the attempt of a phonetically untaught person to imitate the vulgar dialect of the golf club; and I am sorry to say that in spite of the efforts of our Academy of Dramatic Art, there is still too much sham golfing English on our stage, and too little of the noble English of Forbes Robertson.

George Bernard Shaw writing in the preface to Pygmalion.

It is pretty remarkable that is has taken 100 years for Pygmalion to make its way to The Abbey. After such a long wait, it’s about time Eliza Doolittle made her way to the stage.

My introduction to Shaw was, unusually enough,John Bull’s Other Island. His satires and humour greatly appealed to me, and I’ve read a great deal of his works, letters and social commentary. Class, of course, is a reoccurring theme in Shaw’s work. Shaw laid down many of his thoughts on the structures of capitalist society in writings collected for The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism. Women’s independence, as much as class struggle, was something which greatly interested Shaw.

It is useless to pretend that religion and tradition and honor always win the day. It is now a century and a half since the poet Oliver Goldsmith warned us that ‘Honor sinks where commerce long prevails’; and the economic pressure by which Capitalism tempts women grew fiercer after his time. We have just seen how in the case of the parents sending their children out to work in their infancy to add a little to the family income, they found that their wages fell until what they and the children between them could earn was no more than they had been able to earn by themselves before, so that in order to live they now had to send their children to work whether they liked it or not.

Of course while Pygmalion triumphs as romantic comedy, Shaw’s play takes aim at the British class system and the role of women in the society of the time.

It is perhaps Shaw’s most celebrated work. After 100 years, it’s great to see it arrive at The Abbey, which has delivered such excellent works in recent times. I look forward to attending.

On the Abbey stage Wednesday 27 April – Saturday 11 June
Previews
Wednesday 27 April – Tuesday 3 May
No performance Monday 2 May

Monday – Saturday evening 7.30pm, Saturday matinee 2pm
Tickets: €13 – €40