Angela Lansbury Poised for Pygmalion???

Sunday’s Olivier Awards may not be the only thing that brought Brit-born Angela Lansbury back to London. We hear that, as previously tipped, she’s in talks to join the cast of the West End transfer of Pygmalion, which opens at the Garrick Theatre on 25 May 2011 (previews from 12 May). As reported last week, Rupert Everett will reprise his role as Professor Henry Higgins, with a new Eliza Doolittle in the form of Kara Tointon. Everett and Tointon were also guest presenters at the Oliviers, while Everett and Lansbury go back further, having starred together in Michael Blakemore’s 2009 Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit (Everett’s Broadway debut). In Philip Prowse’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s classic Pygmalion, Lansbury would play Everett’s mother Mrs Higgins, the role taken last summer in Chichester by Stephanie Cole.