Exploring the bromance at the heart of My Fair Lady in Chichester

Colonel Pickering is central to the bet at the heart of the show, namely that Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, can’t turn Eliza, whom he dismisses as a “squashed cabbage leaf”, into a high-society paragon.

But the point is that both Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins are better men by the end of the evening.

“I think Pickering is a very mannered chap at the beginning but I think he is a more humane and more decent human being by the end – more decent as a human being in a way that we would recognise now.

“He sees it all as an experiment, and he picks up on one phrase that Higgins says and tells him that he can't possibly turn Eliza into a Duchess at the Embassy Ball. When Eliza comes to ask for lessons, there is quite a quick calculation but Pickering says that it is just impossible. It's a long journey that they go on but Pickering doubts that Higgins can possibly get her to that level of sophistication just through language. I'm not sure that he is expecting him to take up the bet. But I think the point is that they're both fascinated by language. And that is what connects them. They're both fascinated by language and by what language does and what language can achieve and about how language creates boundaries but also whether you can break down those boundaries which is what Higgins thinks he can do.

“For them it is all about that passion for study and that passion for language but it is the housekeeper who makes Pickering think. And so Pickering tells Higgins that Eliza must understand thoroughly what she is doing.

“Pickering is just very impressed with Higgins. There is a definite bromance going on between them. It feels like very public schoolboy the way they talk. They talk about intellectual things but I think he's very much impressed by Higgins’ claims and in his detail.

“But I think they're both guilty of not thinking enough about the human being and about what it means but then Mrs Pearce makes Pickering think. She is the catalyst to humanity.

“There is a division to be had around the experiment and the idea of teaching a woman to be something else but really My Fair Lady is a story about finding your own voice and finding out who you are and also finding your humanity.

“I have never seen My Fair Lady done before on stage. I've always been a big fan of the movie and I can remember watching it so many times. It's an absolute epic. It is good. It is just so good, and then you've got the music. In the first week of rehearsals, I cried five times. People were saying ‘Oh Tony is crying again!’ But it's just so beautiful. It is beautifully scored, and the ability in the room is just astonishing.”