Pygmalion plays final performance on Broadway

The Roundabout's Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw�s comedy Pygmalion, plays its final performance on Broadway on 16 Dec 2007, as scheduled. When the show closes it will have played 31 previews and 69 regular performances.

The comedy opened at the American Airlines Theatre on the 18 Oct 2007, following previews from 21 Sep, for a limited ehgagement.

Pygmalion When Professor Henry Higgins (Mays) comes across a poor and uneducated Cockney girl named Eliza Doolittle, Higgins makes a bet that he can take Eliza from the gutters of London and pass her off as a society lady, by simply teaching her the right dialect in which to speak. Higgins soon discovers that this task involves much more than knowledge; it involves patience and most importantly, affairs of the heart.

The show opened to mostly luke warm reviews: "What you have is less a play than a historical tableau with speeches." (New York Times); "It's always compelling and often delicious, even if it does feel a tad claustrophobic." (New York Daily News); "The unobjectionable result, directed by David Grindley, has a mothbally, duty-bound heft to it" (New York Sun); "Charm-deprived revival of the 1914 play is a starchy, mostly joyless affair" (Variety); "Shows off Shaw and the actors at their best." (New York Theatre Guide).

Directed by David Grindley, Pygmalion features Jefferson Mays (Professor Henry Higgins), Claire Danes (Eliza Doolittle), Boyd Gaines (Colonel Pickering), Jay O. Sanders (Alfred Doolittle), Helen Carey (Mrs. Higgins), Brenda Wehle (Mrs. Pearce), Kerry Bishe (Clara Eynsford Hill), Kieran Campion (Freddy Eynsford Hill), Sandra Shipley (Mrs. Eynsford Hill), Jonathan Fielding (Bystander), Robin Mosley (Bystander) and Karen Walsh (Parlour Maid).

The design team comprises Jonathan Fensom (Sets and costumes), Jason Taylor (lighting) and Gregory Clarke (sound).

Pygmalion premiered on Broadway in 1914 at the Park Theatre and subsequently was revived on Broadway in 1927, 1938, 1945 and 1987.