Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ Gets WTF Staging

Heather Lind is Eliza Doolittle

Heather Lind is Eliza Doolittle

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – George Bernard Shaw’s timeless and incredibly influential play Pygmalion – which has influenced dozens of works of art since its 1912 debut, including Werner Herzog’s film Kaspar Hauser, Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man (as well as the subsequent David Lynch film version), and the Three Stooges’ 1935 slapstick comedy, Hoi Polloi – is being staged at Williamstown Theatre Festival from Wednesday, July 17, 2013, through Saturday, July 27.

In the play, Shaw, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925, creates a sharp satire on class and women’s independence. An impoverished flower seller is taken in hand by a linguistics professor who attempts to change her accent and pass her off as the epitome of English society. For a wager.

The play also spawned the hit Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The current production is directed by former WTF artistic director Nicholas Martin, and stars Robert Sean Leonard (Dead Poet’s Society, “House”) as Henry Higgins and Heather Lind (“Boardwalk Empire”) as Eliza Doolittle.

 

 

 

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