TaPRA Annual Conference 2014

Description

Pygmalion and Adaptation: A Matter of Life and Death In an essay on adaptation, Brett Westbrook recently asked which, of all the ‘texts’ (filmic, scripted, musical, mythical) named Pygmalion, is the pre-cursor text, the original (2010: 28)? In this paper, I’d like to consider the relationship between the Pygmalion myth, Bernard Shaw’s 1914 play and Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 stage musical My Fair Lady, and what, together, they tell us about adaptation, authorship, re-telling, modernisation and intertextuality. Shaw adapted Ovid’s erotic tale in the Metamorphoses into a modern story of privilege and performance, giving voice to Ovid’s silent statue. Lerner and Loewe, writing the musical after Shaw’s death and with a range of alternative endings by the playwright to choose from, united Higgins and Eliza at the musical’s end, in what was now a historical drama with a modern Broadway score. Which of these two is the more radical adaptation? Thomas Leitch categorises My Fair Lady as a ‘correction’ of the source text (2007: 100), but it might further be argued that their version of the Pygmalion myth is more in keeping with Ovid, with Shaw’s as the obtuse interpretation. Not only did Shaw rewrite the ending of his Pygmalion several times, but he also attempted to control reception and interpretation of the play through its Preface and Sequel (where Shaw adapts the characters back into prose). Ironically, given Shaw’s iron control of rehearsals in his lifetime, his play’s variant endings force each director of a revival to make a dramaturgical intervention and choose (or devise) a version of the ending.

Period	4 Sept 2014
Event type	Conference
Location	Egham, Surrey, United KingdomShow on map