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Audition Information:

Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Noel Thorpe Tracey.

At the Theatre Royal, Winchester. Tuesday 7th - Saturday 10th April 2010 at 7.30 pm, plus matinée at 2.30pm on 10th April.

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In Greek legend, Pygmalion was a sculptor and King of Cyprus who fell in love with his own ivory statue of his ideal woman.

At his earnest prayer the goddess Aphrodite gave life to the statue and he married it. Shaw took the name ironically for his dramatization of a Cockney flower girl’s metamorphosis into a lady.

Not only is the play a delightful fantasy but has much to say about social class, money, spiritual freedom and women’s independence.

Forget My Fair Lady: with its combination of ideas, social comment and rich comic characterization, Pygmalion is a much more rewarding experience without the songs!

Clara Eynsford-Hill	24 (ish), Freddy’s older sister. “..ignorant, incompetent, pretentious, unwelcome…useless little snob.” (Shaw’s words!)
Mrs Eynsford-Hill	45-50. Anxious and well-meaning, a gentlewoman in somewhat reduced circumstances.
Freddy Eynsford-Hill	20-22. Charming, naïve, clumsy, incompetent, eager and enthusiastic.
Eliza Dolittle	18-20. “She is not at all a romantic figure.” (Shaw again) Honest, down-to-earth, direct, ambitious but practical. Needs convincing Cockney and RP+
Colonel Pickering	50-70. “An elderly gentleman of the amiable military type…” kindly, generous and rather avuncular.
Henry Higgins	35-45. “He appears…as a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty or thereabouts…He is of the energetic scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied…and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings…”
Mrs Pearce	40-60, Higgins’s housekeeper. Top servant, firm, motherly, disapproving of Higgins’s careless behaviour.
Alfred Dolittle	50-70. “…an elderly but vigorous dustman…free from fear and conscience. He has a remarkably expressive voice, the result of a habit of giving vent to his feelings without reserve.” Sharp, street-wise, a social-climbing con man.
Mrs Higgins	60+. Higgins’s mother. Gracious, cultured, wealthy without snobbery. She was “brought up on Morris and Burne-Jones.” Adores her son but exasperated by his careless, adolescent manner.
Parlourmaid	15-20. Perhaps from the Youth Theatre.
2 Bystanders	male, any age.

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