Pygmalion
Past productions
- New Theatre, New Theatre, Newtown
- Chameleon’s Web Theatre Company, Headgate Theatre, Colchester, The Manifest Theatre, Manningtree, and other locations
- Headlong/Nuffield Southampton/West Yorkshire Playhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
- Garrick Theatre, London
- Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
- Peter Hall Company, Bath Theatre Royal
- Bill Kenwright Ltd / Windsor Theatre Royal, Albery Theatre, London
- New Triad Theatre Company, Chelsea Centre Theatre, Theatr Gwynedd, Bangor, and other locations
- National Theatre, Olivier Theatre, National Theatre
- Shaftesbury Theatre (1963 – Present Day), London
- Salisbury Arts Theatre Limited, Salisbury Playhouse
- Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Theatre
- Cambridge Theatre Co., Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon
- Palace Theatre Watford, Watford Palace
- Bristol Old Vic
- Albery Theatre, London
- Theatre Royal, Bath
- Orchard Theatre Company, Barnstaple, Devon, Various venues in North Devon
- Ravinia Fest., Usa, USA
- Birmingham Repertory Theatre
A play by George Bernard Shaw
Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913.
Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women’s independence.
In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life.
Shaw mentioned that the character of Professor Henry Higgins was inspired by several British professors of phonetics: Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, but above all, the cantankerous Henry Sweet.