Pygmalion
London stage debut of Lesley-Anne Down.
“Denise Coffey allows Donald Eccles both to bristle benevolently as Shaw and to speak those marvellously literate stage directions. Lesley-Anne Down’s Eliza avoids extravagance and and we can believe in that quick change without straining the imagination.” – J C Trewin, Illustrated London News 1st March 1981 (page 52)
This production was revived at the Young Vic, with an altered cast, in August 1981 (qv).
Cast & Crew
Cast
| Alfred Doolittle | C J Allen |
|---|---|
| Clara Eynsford-Hill | Anthea Cooper |
| Colonel Pickering | Tim Seely |
| Eliza Doolittle | Lesley-Anne Down |
| footman | Andrew Wheaton |
| Freddy Eynsford-Hill | Tim Thomas |
| GBS | Donald Eccles |
| Henry Higgins | David Henry |
| Mrs Eynsford-Hill / Her Excellency | Joanna Wake |
| Mrs Higgins | Judy Campbell |
| sarcastic bystander / His Excellency | Michael Rodden |
Crew | |
| Costumes | Bob Ringwood |
| Designer | Carl Toms |
| Director | Denise Coffey |
| Lighting Design | John B Read |
| Sound | Simon Goss |
| Stage Management | Anthea Cooper |
| Stage Management | Martin Mowlam |
| Stage Management | Elizabeth Tambini |
| Stage Management | Andrew Wheaton |
| Wardrobe Mistress | Christine Rowland |
| Press Representative | Peter Thompson Associates |
| Production Photographs | Donald Cooper |
- Added by Jared William.
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Play description
Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character who fell in love with one of his sculptures which later came to life.
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 a ball 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.
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.
Observations
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