Kara Tointon to make West End debut in Pygmalion

Kara Tointon will star as Cockney flower girl Eliza Dolittle

Strictly Come Dancing winner Kara Tointon is to make her West End debut after being cast as Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

Rupert Everett will co-star as Professor Henry Higgins, who tries to transform the Cockney flower girl in a bid to pass her off as a society lady.

Everett is reprising the role after playing Higgins at the Chichester Festival Theatre last year.

The play will open at the Garrick Theatre on 12 May.

Peter Eyre will reprise the role of Colonel Pickering, phonetics professor Higgins' friend with whom he makes the bet to transform Dolittle.

The new West End production will run until 3 September.

Tointon, who played Albert Square's Dawn Swann for four years, recently hiked across the Kaisut Desert in Kenya to raise money for Comic Relief.