Pygmalion (The Old Vic)
Closed 1h 55m
Pygmalion (The Old Vic)
80%
80%
(63 Ratings)
Positive
80%
Mixed
14%
Negative
6%
Members say
Great acting, Entertaining, Funny, Great staging, Great writing

About the Show

Olivier Award-winner Richard Jones directs Bertie Carvel & Patsy Ferran in George Bernard Shaw's comedy.

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Critic Reviews (14)

The London Evening Standard
September 20th, 2023

"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 Guardian (UK)
September 20th, 2023

“The production feels strangely like a museum piece despite its contemporary visual elements.”
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WhatsOnStage
September 20th, 2023

"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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The Telegraph (UK)
September 20th, 2023

"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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The Times (UK)
September 20th, 2023

"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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The Stage (UK)
September 20th, 2023

"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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The Independent (UK)
September 20th, 2023

"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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Theatre Weekly (UK)
September 19th, 2023

"Despite having every opportunity, including an impressive cast, this 'Pygmalion' can’t quite elevate its status beyond bland revival."
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