Jones’ production is like two distinct halves as Act One sees a hyperactive Eliza flying all over the place with her outrageous vowels and grammar. Higgins describes her as ”deliciously low and dirty”. The refreshing arrival of John Marquez as Eliza’s father Alfred Doolittle explains how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. His describing himself as one of the ”undeserving poor” has interesting consequences. Eliza’s scene with the Earls Court residents (2023 laughter) the Eynsford-Hills where she reverts to her Cockney expressions but in her newly acquired accent is amusing.

By Act Two she is a calm and dignified Eliza ready to go to the ball with a gauze frock and magnificent diamonds. Maybe they really were hired by the theatre as they do not appear in all of the production photography? I have some doubts about Laing’s costume choices. Higgins goes the ball in his day wear of woollen jumper and tweed jacket, surely unacceptable.  Eliza is dressed in a schoolgirl’s gymslip which might be interpreted as a choice for a more sexual alliance but it is as if Higgins wouldn’t notice!

Stewart Laing’s sets are dominated by the mathematical, walls made of pinboard, steel chrome 1930s furniture and with numerous desks furnished with Anglepoise lamps in Higgin’s house. In Covent Garden we have the famous Grecian pillars of the original Flower Market.

I much preferred the Old Vic production of Pygmalion some years back with Tim Pigott-Smith as an overgrown schoolboy and the ravishing Michelle Dotrice whose hats were beautiful.  Here Eliza’s ballgown could be an old gauze curtain.  However Shaw’s paternalistic message is enduring,   ”The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.”