One hundred years ago, in May 1926, Britain’s miners walked out, and in a move of solidarity, workers from other industries, printers among them, joined the effort. By the 4th of May, the number of strikers had reached 1.5 million. It was the first ever general strike in Britain. For nine days the nation’s industry was at a standstill. Many of the newspapers stopped printing, and there were few means of communication between authorities and the populace. But the British Broadcasting Company, forerunner to the BBC, saw radio as an immediate and versatile medium in the chaos of the strike. In our Live Radio Play, the BBC chooses to broadcast George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion to offer its audience sophisticated entertainment during the strike. In addition to the play, they will report news of the strike and offer contemporary live music from the time.
Shaw’s Pygmalion, the original play which the musical My Fair Lady is based on, is a play about a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, who makes a bet that he can transform a poor Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a lady by teaching her to speak perfect English. The play depicts Eliza’s transformation and her subsequent struggle to find her place in society, and her assertion of independence. It’s a play full of wit and comic twists which has kept its charm for generations.
