First the memories of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady must be switched off, to allow the ambiguity of Shaw's comedy of manners to be fully appreciated. Robin Lefevre's production tones down the romantic attraction between phonetics specialist Henry Higgins and Eliza, the "deliciously low" cockney flower girl on whom he conducts a social experiment. Stephen Brennan's comic characterisation emphasises Higgins's insensitivity and social inadequacy. He and his sidekick Colonel Pickering (Alan Stanford) become a slightly absurd double act, in PG Wodehouse mode.
Higgins's attempt to bridge the chasm between social classes is only partially successful. By the end Eliza looks and speaks like a duchess but has lost her independence: she must marry to survive. Dawn Bradfield expresses Eliza's transition from beautiful doll to a flesh-and-blood woman with ease, holding the audience's attention in an extended silent sequence in which she moves around Higgins's study, scrutinising the laboratory that formed her and from which she must escape. "Do any of us understand what we are doing?" Higgins asks, and it is the play's enduring scepticism that is brought out here.
· Until August 28. Box office: 00 353 1 874 4045.
