Eliza Doolittle aspires to more than selling flowers on the streets of Covent Garden.
After a chance meeting with Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering, she finds herself the subject of a rash bet to pass her off as a lady amongst the great and the good of London society.
Olivier and Tony Award-winner Richard Jones (Endgame, The Hairy Ape) directs the Olivier Award-winning duo of Bertie Carvel (The 47th, The Crown) and Patsy Ferran (Camp Siegfried, A Streetcar Named Desire) in George Bernard Shaw’s explosively funny, biting and subversive satire on class, as the ruthless linguist Higgins attempts to transform the brilliantly irrepressible Eliza – who breaks the mould he creates for her.
__Access Performances__
- Audio Described: Mon 16 Oct 7.30pm
- Captioned: Fri 13 Oct 7:30pm
- Relaxed: Sat 14 Oct 2:30pm
- British Sign Language: Fri 20 Oct 7:30pm
The story of the cockney flower girl trained to speak and act like a duchess by a phonetics professor has two central characters that give the actors a huge amount to get their teeth into. The issue is that this production has a sense of detachment so we never feel like we get to the real heart of the plot or characters. Shaw's observations about class and social expectations are pretty much lost.
Ferran’s Cockney flower-seller Eliza arrives in an anorak and plimsolls, while Bertie Carvel’s raffishly obnoxious, staccato linguistics professor Higgins, who for his own amusement undertakes her transformation into a faux aristocrat, is powerfully reminiscent of Richard Briers in a 1970s sitcom. The opening scene, where they meet among West End crowds in a rainstorm, is a cacophony of overblown acting and frenetic movement: braying toffs, cor-blimey market traders, a trundling, toy-like onstage taxi. It is deliberately artificial – perhaps we are even being asked to recognise the social signifiers of theatre itself, with its ranked seating and exclusionary ticket prices.
1914 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1926 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1938 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1945 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1987 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1991 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2004 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2005 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2007 | Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Broadway |
2018 | Off-Broadway |
Project Shaw One Night Only Production Off-Broadway |
2018 | Off-Broadway |
Bedlam Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
2023 | West End |
West End |
Videos