In the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor fashions an ivory statue of the ideal woman and promptly falls in love with her. Adapting this story of muse, creation, and ego to the 20th century, just as the British women’s suffrage movement was gaining momentum, the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw turned the sculptor into a professor of phonetics—Henry Higgins, brilliant and arrogant. Higgins bets his colleague Colonel Pickering that he can teach Eliza Doolittle, a poor Cockney girl, to speak English so perfectly that she might pass for a duchess. Language is liberation, he tells us, and it leads to equality. One of the most perfect plays ever written, Pygmalion was first staged in Vienna in 1913. This new production at the Old Vic stars Bertie Carvel (The 47th, The Crown) and the ascending star Patsy Ferran (A Streetcar Named Desire). The Olivier- and Tony-winning director Richard Jones helms the show. —Jensen Davis