This is the delightful play that My Fair Lady was based upon. The characters jump off the page, the action is swift, and the story irresitable. The ending is very strange, since it is all told in narrative, unlike the rest of the story which is a script. ( )

The play opens with Henry Higgins, a professor of linguistics, at Covent Garden sheltering with a crowd from the pouring rain. He amuses himself by taking down people's accents and telling them where they're from - much to their irritation and the fascination of Colonel Pickering. At one point as he leaves, Higgins tells Pickering that if he had a month or so, he could turn flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a duchess. But no one could be more surprised when she decides to take him up on his offer.

The later musical, My Fair Lady, is actually remarkably faithful to its source (aside from all the singing, of course), except for one crucial thing. The ending. In Shaw's play, Eliza is very much aware that Higgins takes her for granted and shows her no real kindness. And thank goodness, in this version when Higgins tells her to run errands for him, she tells him to do them himself. The author even appends an essay to the end of the play explaining the many ways that it is impossible for Eliza and Higgins to have any sort of romantic happy ending. All I have to say to that is Thank Goodness.

The play itself is a quick read, especially since most of the scenes are familiar from My Fair Lady. My favorites are the ones involving Higgins' mother - the only one who sees both the drama and the outcome in advance. She takes Eliza under her wing and does her best to set her son straight. Besides it is at Mrs. Higgins' tea that we see Eliza's disastrous (though perfectly pronounced) first venture into society. Both funny and hinting at deeper truths - the play is well worth a read. And don't leave out the essay at the end!

More at my blog. ( )

A geniunely funny and charming play, with a fascinating message about the function of manners with regards to a class-based society.

The characters are lovable and entertaining, even if some of them are more human than others. Higgins will always be amusing to watch, no matter how you slice it: he is an immature, overly-cultured little boy whose intellect so eclipses emotion that, to him, intellectual pursuits are passion. Eliza is also fun, after she somehow develops a sharp mind with Higgins' cultivation.

However, I had one major criticism that almost ruined the entire play for me. Call me a swooning, hormonal romantic, but I really wanted Eliza and Higgins to get together in the end! I perfectly understand Shaw's explanation at the end about how they could never have married because not only is Higgins not the marrying type due to the admiration he holds for his mother, but because Eliza refuses to submit herself to him, to be the Galatea to his Pygmalion. But still, all that chemistry seems like so much of waste when she goes and marries Freddy, that love-struck milquetoast. I couldn't help but write a mental fanfiction about Eliza's private fantasy about Higgins comes true, in which they are stuck on a remote island together and she seduces him into "making love like any other man." Guess that's just the hopeless romance-whore in me. ( )

I didn't like the attached ending in the book. There was no real need to go into what happens to Eliza after the play ends. ( )

Link to a review on my personal website (might be in Swedish). ( )