A pleasant surprise

I know I’ve seen My Fair Lady at least once before, but it was ages ago and probably when I was still in high school. My response to it was middling. The costumes and musical numbers left an impression, the story itself didn’t. I probably would never have picked up Pygmalion if it hadn’t been something easy to get my hands on and worked for a book challenge I’ve been doing with a friend this year.

For plays, I prefer reading along with dramatized audio or filmed versions. I checked out the L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance audiobook from my library. Pretty sure it was a recorded version of a real play performance and not a dramatized audio version, but it was great and I’d definitely recommend it. Maybe not if you’re actually British though. The accent work was good enough for my American ears, but it might not be exact enough if you hear those accents day in and day out.

I’ll have to check out some more of George Bernard Shaw’s work. This is my first and I had no idea he was so witty. Not quite as witty as my bae Oscar Wilde, but that’s an impossible bar to surpass. I found myself laughing all way through even though there is a serious undercurrent of social commentary throughout the play.

This is a pretty feminist play considering it was published in 1913 by a privileged white man. Dude apparently had some questionable and abhorrent political views, so I can’t say he was a paragon of liberalism. Still, Eliza’s personal journey is an impressive one. There are movies being made my Hollywood today that have less consideration for their female main characters’ journeys. Shaw’s original ending is perfection and it’s a shame that so many productions since have tried shoehorning a romance between Eliza and Henry.