Headlong Theatre

“The science of speech. That’s my profession. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets.”

One flower girl. Two experts. Free lessons. Six months. Duchess required.

Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins accepts a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can turn a flower girl into a duchess by altering her speech and accent. But the lessons learned by all involved are much more far reaching than envisaged.

Over one hundred years after it was written, a radical new co-production explores one of the most celebrated comedies of the 20th Century, Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.

Sam Pritchard directs this radical new staging of Pygmalion, a hilarious and poignant tale of two opposites, Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, trying to find a common language. Playfully carving a contemporary world using sound and video technology, this innovative interpretation examines class identity and questions how far accents and speech can define us in Britain today.