Angela Lansbury to Join Pygmalion as Mrs Higgins?

The West End show in question is the forthcoming revival of Pygmalion at the Garrick Theatre. Rupert Everett (who played the character of Professor Henry Higgins at the Chichester Festival Theatre last year) will continue in the role. He will be joined by former EastEnder and Strictly Come Dancing winner Kara Tointon, who takes the role of the impoverished Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle.

According to Whatsonstage.com, Lansbury is in talks to join the production as Mrs Higgins. Interestingly, Everett and Lansbury have appeared together on stage in recent times, having both starred in Michael Blakemore’s 2009 Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit.

Pygmalion - The Inspiration for My Fair Lady

Pygmalion, written by George Bernard Shaw, is a romantic comedy about the improbably wager made by a phonetics expert that he can teach a simple Covent Garden flower seller how to speak like an refined English lady. The bet will be won if she can pass successfully as a duchess at a swish society garden party.

The play was written as a sharp lampoon of the English class system, as well as recognising the growing independence of women at the time. The play was the inspiration for the later Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, which became a memorable film starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle.

Pygmalion opens at the Garrick Theatre on 25 May 2011 (following previews from 12 May). Full West End casting will be confirmed shortly.