#6. Pygmalion
By George Bernard Shaw
As Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who becomes a phonetics professor's demonstration project of the arbitrariness of class distinctions, Claire Danes (in her Broadway debut) is spirited, charming and emotionally compelling, a good match for Jefferson Mays' brittle and quirky Henry Higgins. Shaw's challenging idea plays are too often sentimentalized and joked up for American audiences, but David Grindley's sharp production never condescends or goes for easy laughs.