As director Peter Hall notes in the programme, Shaw’s plays have gone rather out of fashion recently. Not so their musical adaptations; Pygmalion may not now be a household name, but My Fair Lady certainly is. Yet it seems to me that this is rather unfair on the original. I would count myself a fan of the musical, but its saccharine sweetness lacks both the depth and the darkness of Shaw’s clever, perfectly balanced play. Whilst the musical could be considered a take on the romantic comedy genre, in Pygmalion, the comedy is merely incidental to what is essentially a tragic tale. Which is not to deny that it is often laugh-out-loud funny at times; Eliza the flower girl’s first appearance as a lady is a comic masterpiece, her rounded vowels beautifully emphasising the unlikeliness of her ‘new’ form of small-talk, culminating in the suggestion that her aunt was ‘done in’ for a straw hat. But the humour is rapidly under-cut by the weight of the tragedy which lies at the heart of Shaw’s tale.

Despite the class issues at stake in the play, this tragedy is personal, as opposed to political. Shaw presents the issues in the intensely personal (and vulnerable) form of Eliza Doolittle, beautifully played by Michelle Dockery, recently seen in Sky One’s Hogfather. At first seeming little more than a Cockney caricature, she becomes increasingly more likeable as her transformation takes place, moving the audience to the painful realisation that it is only when she’s all dressed up and speaking well that she truly gains our sympathy and our empathy – rather than our amusement and our pity.

Whilst class is an obvious key theme in the text itself, gender politics is a generally unexplored aspect of the play which Peter Hall brings to the fore here. To put it simply, the men are all infantile and in some respect self-deluding – with Pickering and Higgins repeatedly referred to by Mrs Higgins as ‘little boys’, and Edward Bennett’s foppish Freddy providing a continuous source of amusement – whilst the majority of the women, from Higgins' mother to his housekeeper, are capable and far-seeing. This not only contributes to a great deal of the comedy; it also raises more serious questions about self and ownership, selling and buying, power and control. This is apt considering the climate in which the play was written – Shaw was a keen supporter of the women’s movement – yet it has its own relevance today, with the objectification of woman still a current topic, and reality TV programmes blurring the lines between creature and creation.

These latent gender politics are impressively portrayed by the excellent cast. Barry Stanton’s mild, almost child-like Colonel Pickering is the perfect foil to Tim Pigott-Smith’s exuberant, childish, tantrum-ing Higgins, whilst Barbara Jefford and Una Stubbs are both amusingly adult in comparison. But it is Michelle Doherty that is the true star, imbuing Eliza’s struggle to develop from a creation to an independent creature with real charm and depth. The delicacy and intricacy of the costume design enhance her performance: her costumes as a flower girl and an independent women are aptly similar in their solidity, despite their difference in beauty, whilst the elegant frailty of Eliza’s ‘Duchess’ costume highlights her sense of being vulnerable and lost. The sumptuous sets further highlight the contrast between the masculine and feminine; the panelled wood and leather of Higgins’ residence off-set the fruity voices and portly presences of the two bachelors, whilst the delicate trimmings of Mrs Higgins’ drawing room form a fitting setting for Higgins to be thrown off balance. To be frank, I would have to nit-pick to find a fault with this production, but having done so (!), I can say that the pacing in the first act is a little slow, making it difficult to become immediately involved. Furthermore, the projection of some of the cast sometimes fails to match the power of Pigott-Smith and Stanton’s full-bodied voices. But these are tiny complaints – this production is sterling, and the play itself is both hilariously funny and uncomfortably insightful. It does not disappoint.