All's Well That Ends Well

A production of Pygmalion starring Rupert Everett just opened in London.  This is from a review in the Telegraph when it played in Chichester:

Philip Prowse directs and designs an ostentatious production, which sets the action in a red plush Edwardian theatre. He has also interpolated a final scene, undreamt of by Shaw, in which Eliza marries the amiable but brainless Freddie to Higgins’s palpable dismay.

Shaw not only dreamed it, he spelled it out in great detail.  Pretty much from the start Pygmalion was his most popular play. (Though it has some depth, Shaw wrote it as a potboiler.  He was already a successful playwright for the smart set, but this was a bona fide West End hit.)

Also, from the start, people who put it on were unhappy with the ending.  Shaw, who had spent the last couple decades trying to change British theatre, thought the conventional "happy ending" where Higgins and Eliza realize they're meant for each other didn't make any sense.  He didn't see anything particularly "happy" about them as a couple.

Yet, early (and later) productions tried to imply there was something between them. (When the popular film version came out in 1938, producer Gabriel Pascal essentially double-crossed Shaw and had Eliza come back to Higgins at the end.  This was the ending that Alan Jay Lerner used in My Fair Lady.) So annoyed was Shaw by attempts to thwart his meaning that he wrote a postscript which to this day is found in the published version of the play.  He goes on at length about what happens when the action of the play is over.  To keep it short, Higgins and Eliza aren't meant for each other, and she marries Freddy.

Still, I don't think the play needs this "improvement" the production has added. I guarantee Shaw wouldn't have gone along with it.  He didn't let people change his dialogue and spoke out against unnecessary spectacle.  He also probably wouldn't like a scowling Higgins left alone at the end--to Shaw, the character was an inveterate bachelor married to his work.