HAVING been born in Evesham, the arrival of the current tour of Pygmalion in Malvern sees its star Alistair McGowan enjoying something close to a homecoming. "Of all of the places on the tour," he says, "it's the one with the most emotional resonance.

"I have performed there once before," he recalls, adding that his most vivid memory of Malvern Theatres is not a good one. "We went to see The Nutcracker on a school trip and I was terribly ill, so there's something of a ghost to slay this time round."

Even though he had already played the part of Henry Higgins for three weeks, taking over from Rupert Everett in the West End, the current production is, he says, "like a completely different part and a new experience."

Alistair is drawn to Henry Higgins for the similarities he finds with himself. "He's just very much like me," he explains. "Someone who's fascinated by language."

In fact, the very first play Alistair ever did was The Philanthropist. "One of the lines was 'you are far more interested in how people say things than you are in what they actually say.' And that's true of me - I don't take in directions because I'm just listening to the accent of the person giving them to me - I'll be thinking the way they said a word was interesting."

"I'd always felt close to Henry Higgins," he adds. "My mother did Pygmalion in her amateur group in Evesham and I wanted to be him on and off stage."

Both Alistair and his wife, Charlotte Page, who plays Higgins' housekeeper, have, as he puts it 'stepped aside' from what they are best known for doing. "Charlotte has done a lot of opera and musicals - she played Christine in Phantom of the Opera so this is quite a departure," he says, adding that people accept his own 'side-stepping' back into acting more easily these days.

"By now, people either know that I act without doing impressions, and a lot of the people who come to see Pygmalion will not know me at all.

"I think the important thing and the reason I enjoy doing this part is that there's a lot of wit and comedy in it and it's a challenge to bring that out."

There is a tendency, he's noticed during the run, for people to think they're coming to see My Fair Lady. "Some of them," he says, "even leave thinking they have seen My Fair Lady."

But in Pygmalion, Shaw didn't opt for a happy ending. "It's crystal clear what he wanted," says Alistair. "I just try to play what's there. But I think that generally, there's this thing about people wanting a happy ending.

"Higgins is almost like Frankenstein. He creates this creature and he has to let her go because she's exceeded his expectations and they would be hopeless for each other.

"There is," he says "a huge contemporary resonance in the play. People see it and see that society hasn't really changed. People's intelligence continues to be underestimated and we under-fund our investment in people from different places.

"You should treat everybody the same. That's what Higgins saw and Shaw believed. And it's what I believe, too."

The show continues its run until mid-June, timing that Alistair invites us to make of what we will, in the light of his having made his debut as a Wimbledon commentator last year.

Pygmalion is at Malvern Theatres from Monday until Saturday, May 3. To book, call the box office on 01684 892277 or visit malvern-theatres.co.uk