Tony Winner Robert Sean Leonard Set to Play Henry Higgins in Old Globe's Pygmalion

Tony winner Robert Sean Leonard will take on the role of gruff phonetics professor Henry Higgins in a 100th-anniversary production of Pygmalion at San Diego’s Old Globe. Directed by Nicholas Martin, Pygmalion begins performances January 12, 2013, with an official opening night on January 17. Additional casting will be announced shortly.

George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion originally premiered in 1913 in Vienna, Austria. Pygmalion tells the story of Professor Higgins, who makes a bet that he can train a rough Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle to pass for royalty by changing her speech patterns. The play was famously adapted into the 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady and the 1964 film Pygmalion. The play first opened on Broadway in 1914 and was subsequently revived five times—most recently in 2007, starring Claire Danes as Eliza Doolittle and Tony winner Jefferson Mays as Henry Higgins.

Leonard won a Tony for The Invention of Love and earned additional nominations for Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Candida. His additional Broadway credits include Born Yesterday, The Violet Hour, The Music Man, The Iceman Cometh, Arcadia, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, The Speed of Darkness, Breaking the Code and Brighton Beach Memoirs. Best known as Dr. James Wilson on House M.D., Leonard’s additional film and TV credits include Dead Poets Society, Swing Kids, Tape, The Last Days of Disco and Standoff.