A different interpretation by Danes in 'Pygmalion'

NEW YORK - Claire Danes makes her stage debut - on Broadway! - in the Roundabout Theatre Company's new production of George Bernard Shaw's

Pygmalion

. It is a tasty production, full of old-fashioned style and stagecraft, and lots and lots of language; language, in fact, is the point as well as the vehicle.

I have a cartoon on my office wall showing Shaw - with his unmistakable big beard - sitting on a beach and molding the figure of a woman out of sand. Pygmalion, in Greek myth, sculpted a woman and then fell in love with her.

Shaw's 1913 play is about Henry Higgins (Jefferson Mays), a professor of phonetics who finds Liza Doolittle (Claire Danes) selling flowers on the street. He makes a bet with a colleague, Colonel Pickering (Boyd Gaines) that he can sculpt her into a convincing aristocrat by altering her accent and her grammar, knowing that language is class and, therefore, language is politics: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him."

Director David Grindley has made some interesting decisions, away from the lovable toward the troubling, and away from happy endings to ambiguity. Mays' Professor Higgins is not an irresistible, elegant, middle-aged charmer (think Peter O'Toole in the last Broadway revival, or Rex Harrison in the film version, My Fair Lady), but a brilliant brat, a mamma's boy who is rude and petulant and given to sulks and snits. Liza isn't an adorable waif, but a woman who is smart and sensible and knows about hard times and injustice.

That Danes and Mays as Liza and Higgins are closer in age and closer in height matters: Intimidation factors have been erased, and the issues are now gender and class, not generation and tradition. In Act 5's last scene, with its big Shavian debate, Grindley keeps the professor and his now-transformed pupil seated next to each other on a sofa; it isn't until Liza suddenly discovers that she can define her own life - and Danes' face opens radiantly at this moment - that Grindley has her stand up.

The crucial accents, although sometimes obviously coached, manage to be convincing without being (as can be the case with the Cockney) unintelligible. Henry's mother's accent might be a bit more toffee-nosed, and Liza's father (Jay O. Sanders) seems to acquire a posh accent with his posh new clothes, but it makes listening easier for us. And Shaw, radical thinker and superb debater, is always worth listening to.

Written by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by David Grindley. Sets and costumes by Jonathan Fensom. Lighting by Jason Taylor. Sound by Gregory Clarke.

Cast: Claire Danes (Liza Doolittle), Jefferson Mays (Henry Higgins), Boyd Gaines (Colonel Pickering), Jay O. Sanders (Alfred Doolittle), Brenda Wehle (Mrs. Pearce), Helen Carey (Mrs. Higgins).

Playing at American Airlines Theater (227 W. 42d St.). Through Dec. 16. Tickets $51.25-$96.25. Information: 212-719-1300 or www.roundabouttheatre.org.

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