Pygmalion (The Old Vic) London Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (24)
See it if you wanna see a new and fresh take on a classic with great chemistry performances
Don't see it if your expecting high class staging and spectacular
See it if You enjoy an amusing evening at the theatre with great performances by the lead actors
Don't see it if You are looking for a fabulous set or costuming Read more
See it if you want to see the value of behaviour, education & the supreme power of dependence on others. The cast are amazing!
Don't see it if you don’t enjoy fresher looks on classic plays.
See it if You want a strong production of a classic play, with some great acting
Don't see it if You want a more traditional production.
See it if you like the classics well put to stage and quite true to original form
Don't see it if you like plays that are more obviously current and relevant Read more
See it if you are a fan of anyone in the cast or you want to see a short and snappy Shaw piece that won't bore you to death.
Don't see it if you want a deep and meaningful play or if you have a strong dislike for farce and physical comedy. Read more
See it if you like strong characters, interesting plays, quick dialogues and funny plays.
Don't see it if you struggle with following complicated dialogues as these are very quick!
See it if you want to see the classic story, accompanied by great acting of Olivier-award winners, while also with refreshing staging elements
Don't see it if you seek new angle on the classic story, plot twists, epic stage effects, etc.
Critic Reviews (14)
"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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“The production feels strangely like a museum piece despite its contemporary visual elements.”
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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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"Patsy Ferran is a brilliant Eliza Doolittle – but this flamboyant production undercuts the key message of George Bernard Shaw’s classic"
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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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"A knowing mishmash of anachronism and acting styles, it is not quite conceptually coherent. It’s up to the performances – especially Patsy Ferran’s as Eliza Doolittle – to cut through the Shavian rhetoric and the production’s wilful idiosyncrasies, and redeem the whole experience from becoming utterly confounding and emotionally remote."
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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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"Despite having every opportunity, including an impressive cast, this 'Pygmalion' can’t quite elevate its status beyond bland revival."
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