Dear Liar review – George Bernard Shaw spars with the original Eliza in Pygmalion

2026-02-11 - 07:25

Jermyn Street theatre, London Jerome Kilty’s fusty two-hander charts the cantankerous and flirtatious relationship between the playwright and actor Mrs Patrick Campbell When Jerome Kilty was stationed in London with the US army during the second world war, he doorstepped George Bernard Shaw. The octogenarian playwright, he recalled, “received us cordially”. Kilty went on to become an actor and playwright himself, and Shaw inspired his biggest success – this 1957 two-hander drawn from the author’s ardent if unconsummated correspondence with Mrs Patrick Campbell, the original Eliza in Pygmalion. Campbell’s magnificence is lost to memory, while Shaw’s plays slide from the repertory. Why bother with their antique sparring? This revival depends on feeling performances by Rachel Pickup and Alan Turkington as two outsize personalities skirmishing between courtship and combat. At Jermyn Street theatre, London, until 7 March Continue reading...