Pygmalion at Carrollwood Players Theatre

Carrollwood Players Theatre presents

Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw

Abridged and Adapted by Steve Cleberg

A CWP Black Box Classic Comedy

Directed by Miguel E. Rodriguez

August 2nd - 11th, 2024

Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Sundays at 2 p.m.

In the original 1912 play that inspired the beloved musical My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, is so confident that he can train anyone to speak perfect English that he makes a bet with his associate Colonel Pickering that he will train a poor Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess.

Higgins first encounters Eliza in Covent Garden. Later she shows up at his door and he reluctantly takes her in. While he has some initial success polishing her speech, the tone of her conversation is still coarse. This does not stop the young, dashing Freddy Eynsforth-Hill from finding her alluring when he first meets her at one of Higgins’s mother’s genteel ‘at-homes’.

Mrs Higgins is concerned about the effect her son’s bet will have on Eliza, but he dismisses her worries. Having passed for a woman of wealth and high status with great success at a society ball, Eliza becomes frustrated and upset at the way she has been treated and the uncertainty of her future.

Will Professor Higgins finally see Eliza as more than a test subject? Will Eliza find the answer to the question "what's to become of me?"

Presented with the support of the Arts Council of Hillsborough County and the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners.