Bertie Carvel and Patsy Ferran to Star in PYGMALION, Kicking Off The Old Vic's 2023-24 Season

Two-time Olivier Award winning actor Bertie Carvel will join fellow Olivier winner Patsy Ferran in a new production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion at London's The Old Vic this autumn.

The production, to be directed by Richard Jones, will run September 6-October 28, 2023, with an official opening night on September 19. The production is the first play of The Old Vic's 2023-2024 season.

Jones says of the production, "How lucky the director who is offered the opportunity to collaborate with the charismatic and unique Patsy Ferran and the brilliant, shape-shifting Bertie Carvel-moreover, how lucky to direct these actors in Shaw's Pygmalion, which follows Professor Higgins' artificial creation of a society lady who rebels against her creator. I'm very happy to return to the welcoming and supportive team at The Old Vic having been here in 2015 and 2020 with The Hairy Ape and Endgame, respectively."

Bertie Carvel has earned two Olivier Awards for his performance in the West End production of INK and Matilda the Musical. He made his Broadway debut as Miss Trunchbull in Matilda: The Musical, earning Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle nominations. Other theatre includes The Hairy Ape at The Old Vic, Bakkhai & Rope at Almeida Theatre, The Pride at Royal Court, Coram Boy at National Theatre and Parade at Donmar Warehouse, which earned Carvel an Olivier Award nomination.

Patsy Ferran's theatre credits include A Streetcar Named Desire, Three Sisters, Summer and Smoke for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Actress and Critic's Circle Award for Best Actress, Camp Siegfried, and A Christmas Carol, 15 Heroines: The Labyrinth, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, My Mum's A Twat, Speech and Debate, As You Like It; Treasure Island, The Merchant Of Venice, The Angry Brigade, Blithe Spirit.

George Bernard Shaw's classic play inspired the legendary and award winning musical My Fair Lady, written and composed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.

Based on the classical myth, Pygmalion plays on the complex business of human relationships in a social world. When Professor Henry Higgins 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.