One two three two two three whoops two three

So. As Gentle Readers will be aware, this production of Pygmalion will have the Pyggie Ball. I was originally against it. My version of the play (that is, I think, the version published before the first production (which was, if I am not mistaken, in German translation) rather than the script that was used in the first London productions) has only five scenes: Covent Garden, Wimpole Street, Mrs. Higgins’ses at-home, Wimpole Street after the ball, Mrs. Higgin’ses’sses the next morning. The version we are playing, which is based on the London playscript I believe, adds three short scenes: before the at-home there’s a short scene of Higgins training Eliza, after the after-the-ball scene there’s a short scene of Eliza and Freddie (during which Eliza does not sing “show me”), and plumb spang in the middle is the Pyggie Ball.

As I say, I was against including those scenes, but now I think that the Pyggie Ball is a Good Thing, on the whole. It’s visually attractive, you can slip in the Eynsford-Hills, which is nice, and it underlines the imbecility of the entire class thing. “Silly people don’t know their own silly business” Higgins says later, and he is utterly right. For all that they place such emphasis on the markers of class, they don’t speak properly themselves, nor do they recognize those markers correctly for themselves. They have to rely on Nepommuck—and Nepommuck is dishonest, playing the game for his own purposes, and is, besides, a fool. Insofar as the play is an attack on the class system (and it is), the Ball shows the inconsistency, incoherence and instability of that system. So that’s all right, d’y’see?

Well, and the thing about the Ball is that we waltz. Dear Jane, our director, has chosen the Liebeslieder, Strauss Op. 114, a lovely piece of music if a trifle difficult to dance to. And most of us are not dancers. Your Humble Blogger is not a dancer, although I can waltz a little, so I am well up on most of the crowd. We will have (unless there are changes…) five couples; of those ten persons, I believe three of us have waltzed on a dance floor. I count myself in that, knowing that there are some Gentle Readers who are right now snorting through their noses at the thought that what I do could properly be called waltzing, but think of this: seven of us have less experience than I have.

And our Dear Director—let me make this clear, I adore her, and yield to no-one in my adoration, but a dance teacher, she ain’t. Ah, well. It’ll all work out. In fact, I suspect it will be gorgeous. But it will take some doing.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.