Its first New York production opened on 24 March 1914 at the German-language Irving Place Theatre. Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913, in a German translation by Shaw's Viennese literary agent and acolyte, Siegfried Trebitsch. She came on board almost immediately, but her mild nervous breakdown contributed to the delay of a London production. Shaw wrote the play in early 1912 and read it to famed actress Mrs Patrick Campbell in June. Pickering in the London production, Philip Merivale (second from right) played Henry Higgins opposite Mrs Patrick Campbell (right) when Pygmalion was taken to Broadway (1914) First productions Īfter creating the role of Col. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, but above all, the cantankerous Henry Sweet. Shaw mentioned that the character of Professor Henry Higgins was inspired by several British professors of phonetics: Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander J.

Shaw would also have been familiar with the musical Adonis and the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea that was first presented in 1871. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure.

Gb shaw pygmalion