Theatre review | GB Shaw’s ego takes centre stage in My Fair Ladies

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The mission of George Bernard Shaw's life was to set the world to rights. It was a long life, and at times the world took some note, granting him both the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar for the 1938 Pygmalion screenplay, which eventually became My Fair Lady.

The playwright’s impish but implacable self-satisfaction animates this monologue by Des Keogh, for while the piece devised by the actor (with an acknowledgement to the late Donal Donnelly) is ostensibly about Shaw’s love affairs, it is really about Shaw’s ego.

One indication of his conceit was his insistence that, although committed to a sexless marriage, his virility was not to be impugned. Hence this incomplete collection of fair ladies, most of them actors and undeniably fair. Aged photographs of Mrs Patrick Campbell show her unique loveliness, and it is no great surprise that even in her 50s her playing of Eliza Doolittle continued to enchant audiences. To him she was Stella, to her he was, to the delight of many observers, Joey. Not so delighted was Mrs GBS, the wealthy Irish woman who kept him financially afloat for the many years during which his political activities, books and plays didn’t always have the influence he thought they deserved.

Keogh's staccato delivery is supported by excellent whiskers, and he catches an important trace of pathos in a script that, happily, includes a scene from Pygmalion. His posture on stage is that of a man commanding a known territory, here a gracefully Edwardian set by Jim Queally. With music as an episodic commentary, the direction by Patrick Talbot is enhanced by Moyra D'Arcy's lighting, condensing the atmosphere into an unexpected glow of yearning. Poor Joey. Until May 29th