Shaw and Cocteau

The latest issue of The Shavian has a fascinating article by Michel Pharand about links between the dramatists Bernard Shaw and Jean Cocteau.

I know Cocteau primarily as the author of the play The Infernal Machine, which reworks the Oedipus myth. Back in the 1990s, his later play Les Parents Terribles became quite popular in a new translation by Jeremy Sams called Indiscretions.

However, as Pharand observes, Cocteau also designed costumes for a Broadway revival of Shaw's Candida in 1946. That play starred Katherine Cornell in the title role, but also included as Marchbanks the then-unknown actor Marlon Brando.

Brando ended up receiving a Theatre World Award for his performance, launching his stage career. Though he is now more famous as a film actor, his last performance on stage was in another Shaw play, Arms and the Man, in 1953.

Another connection the article notes between Cocteau and Shaw is that Cocteau translated into French the Jerome Kilty play Dear Liar, which I just saw at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The play explores through letters the complex relationship between Shaw and the actress Pat Campbell, who first brought to life the role of Eliza Doolittle on the British stage in the London premiere of Pygmalion.

Cocteau's French version of Dear Liar opened in 1960. The following year, Cocteau wrote a preface for a translation of Shaw and Campbell's letters. Pharand provides in the article a translation of this preface, which includes the line: "Like many famous vegetarians, Shaw ate humans."

Many thanks to Pharand, author of the indispensable book Bernard Shaw and the French, for an enlightening and amusing article!

Good Liars

Yesterday was the final day of the Shaw Symposium at Niagara-on-the-Lake. I was pleased to be able to attend the talks as well as plays produced by the Shaw Festival.

On Saturday, Gustavo Rodriguez Martin and Pilar Carretero Caro discussed a corpus-based analysis they did on the letters between Bernard Shaw and Pat Campbell. They wondered, among other things, if Shaw was actually experiencing the emotions he described, something a corpus-based analysis can't determine, as it is unable to detect irony.

Kay Li then spoke about Shaw's play Major Barbara and artificial intelligence. She discussed the challenges of training large language models to prevent hallucinations (in which AI returns factually incorrect information). Next, Audrey McNamara gave a talk on Shaw and the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he won 100 years ago in 2025, though the prize was not awarded until 2026, and Shaw did not receive his medal until 2027.

Since Saturday was Shaw's birthday, we all had cake to celebrate. Then, conference attendees were off to the Royal George Theatre (soon to be torn down in the name of progress) to see a matinee of Major Barbara starring Gabriella Sundar Singh, who is also appearing at the Shaw Festival in a number of roles in Gnit by Will Eno. Following the performance, we had a group discussion with Fiona Byrne, who played both Lady Britomart and Rummy Mitchens, and Andre Morin, who played Adolphus Cusins.

Saturday night, we went to see Dear Liar in the Spiegeltent, which was a wonderful venue. I had previously seen the play at Irish Rep, so I was less excited about it than Major Barbara. However, the play ended up being the highlight of the symposium. Marla McLean played Pat Campbell and Graeme Somerville played Shaw. The production was performed in the round, which generated a wonderful intimacy as the performers recited lines from the letters of two giants of early-twentieth-century British theatre.

Sunday morning, Alice Clapie discussed Shaw's physiological dramaturgy, quoting many of his letters to the actress Elizabeth Robins. Wan Jin then spoke about the novelist Eileen Chang's incorporation of Shaw's ideas into novels like The Rouge of the North and The Fall of the Pagoda, as well as her famous novella Love in a Fallen City. She argued that Chang's work captures the counter-oriental gaze Shaw had employed in his play Arms and the Man.

Toward the end of the Symposium, I chaired a session that included Dibasi Roy and Bandhuli Chattopadhyay. I'm back in New York now, but it's been an amazing past few days.

Missing the Magic

I'm in Niagara-on-the-Lake for the Shaw Symposium. Today, Dorothy Hadfield, the President of the International Shaw Society, welcomed us, and then Pragna Desai, Director of Community Engagement & Outreach for the Shaw Festival, gave a keynote address.

The Shaw Festival has a mandate to perform plays from the lifetime of Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and works in dialogue with those plays. The theatre is currently raising $150 million to replace the Royal George Theatre and to build two new campuses: an Artists' Village to house theatre professionals and a Center for Lifetime Creativity, which will serve the entire community.

During the keynote address, we also heard about another new initiative, Every Kid in Niagara, which has the goal of bringing all of the students in the Niagara region to see plays at the Shaw Festival at least twice over the course of their academic careers. In order to do this, the festival is partnering with local buses to ensure they have the vehicles (and drivers) necessary. The festival also plans to increase its programing for students.

After the keynote, we headed to the Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum, where Jennifer Buckley and Christopher Wixson led a discussion on Shaw's relationship to the play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, and how that same play inspired contemporary dramatist Will Eno to write his adaptation, Gnit. Eno's Gnit premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2013 and is now receiving its Canadian premiere at the Shaw Festival. Sadly, the magical play that inspired Shaw had the life sucked out of it by Eno's adaptation.

I just got back from seeing Gnit, which reminded me of Donmar Warehouse's production of Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea in a new version by Elinor Cook. In that version, the supernatural overtones of the mysterious sailor were eliminated, seriously weakening the play. Peer Gynt doesn't just have supernatural overtones, though. It is a full-on supernatural fantasy complete with trolls, the devil, and other mystical figures appearing on stage. Like Cook, Eno rationalizes everything, leaving only the husk of a once great play.

Incidentally, the Hudson Classical Theater Company in New York is opening their own adaptation of The Lady From the Sea this month, penned by Executive Artistic Director Susane Lee. I have higher hopes for that production. Until I see it, I'll have to content myself with other plays the Shaw Festival has on offer: Shaw's Major Barbara and the two-hander Dear Liar which dramatizes the writer's correspondence with Pat Campbell.

Tomorrow, I'll be seeing both of those, and attending talks by noted Shavians as the Shaw Symposium continues!

Back from Boston

I enjoyed the Dickens Symposium at Boston University last week, where I delivered a paper on theatrical audiences in the works of Charles Dickens.

Boston was a great location to have the symposium, as it was the American city Dickens was fond of most. It's also the birthplace of Edgar Allan Poe, author of the play Politan, as well as some more famous works. The city now has a statue of Poe across the street from Boston Common.

Most of the papers at the conference had nothing to do with drama, though a couple of them did relate Dickens to Poe. Elizabeth Bridgham related the Master Humphrey character who frames The Old Curiosity Shop to Poe's story "A Man of the Crowd" while Katie Bell related another tale published in Master Humphrey's Clock to the famous story "The Tell-Tale Heart."

It was also nice to meet Meoghan Cronin, who was able to tell me about theatre KAPOW in New Hampshire, and to meet up with some old acquaintances, including Jennifer Heine, Claire Woods, Jude Nixon, and Lillian Nayder. I also got to see some of my old stomping grounds in Boston, from when I lived there a quarter century ago. The city has changed, but not as much as New York has over that time.

After getting back from Boston, I was able to squeeze in some theatre, Melissa Maney's Hungry Women at SoHo Playhouse, and Death Becomes Her on Broadway. Tomorrow, I'm off to another symposium, this one sponsored by the International Shaw Society.

Report of the Special Committee

In 1832, the British parliament issued a report by a select committee formed to investigate the state of dramatic literature.

Edward Bulwer, who would later go on to write the popular plays The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, chaired the committee. It also included other members of parliament with literary ambitions, including Richard Lalor Sheil.

According to the report, "a considerable decline, both in the Literature of the Stage, and the taste of the Public for Theatrical Performances, is generally conceded." That this was a matter of urgent business for the government seems almost unthinkable today in the U.S.

Of course, the British stage in the early 19th century was also subject to significant regulation. The Licensing Act of 1737 had solidified a virtual monopoly on spoken-word drama held by the Theatres Royal at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. However, according to the select committee, "such privileges have neither preserved the dignity of the Drama, nor, by the present Administration of the Laws, been of much advantage to the Proprietors of the Theatres themselves."

It was not until the passage of the Theatres Act in 1843 that the monopoly was abolished, allowing the so-called "minor theatres" to perform spoken-word drama. Before that, they were limited to a handful of musical genres such as burletta. What exactly is burletta? Well, the committee tried to find out, and discovered no one really knew. According to James Winston, former stage-manager of the Haymarket and Drury Lane, even the Lord Chamberlain himself--who was charged with regulating drama--had difficulty defining burletta.

While two theatres in London had been sufficient during the Restoration era, the city had grown tremendously since then. The sizes of the two patent theatres were enlarged, but there were still only two. J. Payne Collier (who had his own controversies to come) testified before the committee, "the great evil has always been that instead of multiplying theatres in proportion to the increase of population, the proprietors have enlarged theatres."

Collier opined that London playwriting was at low ebb, and the committee seems to have agreed. It would not be until the end of the century that the British theatre would see the playwriting talent of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

Shavian Shenanigans

I loved last year's production of The Devil's Disciple by Gingold Theatrical Group, and a short review I wrote of the show recently appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of The Shavian.

The same issue also contains a review of Mrs. Warren's Profession, which I saw last summer at Shaw's Corner, Bernard Shaw's former home at Ayot St. Lawrence. The production, directed by Jonas Cemm, was later staged at the Theatre at the Tabard, which apparently had better acoustics even if it was not quite as picturesque.

Other interesting articles in the issue include Alexandra Glavanakova's report on the controversial Bulgarian National Theatre production of Arms and the Man that was met with fierce protests by Nationalists, and Soudabeh Ananisrab's discussion of the British Regional Repertory Movement, a piece that provided new evidence from the archives at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.

The most substantial article in the issue, however, is Michel Pharand's "Mrs Warren Goes to France: The Politics of Translation." Pharand traces the story of the first French translations of some of Shaw's plays by Augustin and Henriette Hamon. Though the Hamons were not sticklers for accuracy, they were responsible for introducing the French to both The Devil's Disciple and Mrs. Warren's Profession, as well as such plays as The Philanderer, You Never Can Tell, and Candida.

If you want to get your own copy of The Shavian in the future, be sure to join the Shaw Society, which is based in Britain but quite welcoming to international members.

Best Shows of 2024

When New York theatre shut down in 2020, I had to come up with a list of the top shows I missed due to the pandemic.

Since then, theatre has come back... very slowly. Each year I've hoped that the next year would be better, but sadly theatre in New York--and in the United States in general--is in a sorry state, less diverse, less original, and less interesting than it has been in a long time.

That doesn't mean there haven't been any good shows this year, and I've been fortunate enough to see a few of them. (Though some of the best plays I saw, including Mrs. Warren's Profession and Fable, were far from New York.) Here's my list of the top productions that opened in New York City in 2024:

10. The Heart of Rock and Roll - Yes, jukebox musicals are way overdone, but this delightful romantic comedy featuring the songs of Huey Lewis and the News won me over, in part due to the comic acting of McKenzie Kurtz.

9. Stereophonic - Even when it was Off-Broadway, Stereophonic was getting incredible buzz, much of it deserved. It's true that if you're not a Fleetwood Mac fan you won't be able to appreciate it as much of some of your neighbors in the theatre, but it's still worth seeing.

8. The Hills of California - Similar to Stereophonic in theme and scope but more ambitious in terms of its use of theatricality, Jez Butterworth's The Hills of California was a must-see play for me. Though not as successful as some of his previous work, it still packs an emotional punch.

7. A Wonderful World - I went into this bio-musical about Louis Armstrong somewhat skeptical, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how deftly the show treated its subject, one of the transformational geniuses of popular music in the 20th century. Also, having Tony-Award-winner James Monroe Iglehart play Armstrong didn't hurt.

6. Blood of the Lamb - If this Off-Broadway drama wasn't on your radar, it should have been. Arlene Hutton's eerily prophetic play about the human costs of increased legislation over women's bodies took medical and legal discussions beyond abortion to the multitude of cases that arise when pregnancies, wanted or not, go differently than planned.

5. Cabaret - Speaking of politics, this year's revival of the John Kander and Fred Ebb classic Cabaret felt more relevant than ever, not so much due to tinkering with Joe Masteroff's book as from a fresh interpretation by director Rebecca Frecknall. The immersive nature of the performance brought in a lot of press, as did some star actors, but the highlight of the show is Bebe Neuwirth's portrayal of Fräulein Schneider.

4. The Devil's Disciple - Bernard Shaw's comedic melodrama about the American Revolution is one of my favorite plays, but its large, mostly male cast makes it tricky to get staged. Director David Staller came up with an intriguing solution in adapting the play for a cast of five women. Oddly enough, it worked, in part due to an amazing ensemble led by Folami Williams. With a run straddling a controversial presidential election, this production gave audiences plenty of food for thought.

3. Suffs - If anything, Shaina Taub's musical about the women's suffrage movement was a bit too politically relevant this election year. It can be infuriating to watch a group of well-meaning activists fight one another rather than join forces to achieve something, but that's exactly what happened at the beginning of the 20th century, just as it happens all-too-often today. Taub's catchy songwriting provided the perfect medium to tell the complex story of how the 19th amendment was finally passed. Sadly, the show is now closing.

2. La Forza del Destino - If you missed the Metropolitan Opera's production of Giuseppi Verdi's rarely performed La Forza del Destino, you might have a while to wait for another chance. The opera has been said to be cursed ever since the baritone Leonard Warren died on stage during the show while singing at the Met in 1960. This year's production was instead blessed by amazing performances by Lise Davidsen as Leonora and Judit Kutasi as Preziosilla. If the Met announces the opera's return in its next season, definitely try to go.

1. The Great Gatsby - Though it was snubbed by the Tony Awards this year, the best show I saw in New York in 2024 was Kait Kerrigan, Nathan Tysen, and Jason Howland's new musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The lyrics are delightful, and the elaborate sets and musical numbers are impressive. Jeremy Jordan, Eva Noblezada, Noah J. Ricketts, and Samantha Pauly all give strong performances, but the real star of the show is F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, which is presented in a manner that is both faithful to the original novel and still relevant to audiences today.

Sadly, there weren't a lot of runners-up this year, but these shows prove it's still possible to make great theatre in New York.

The Devil's Disciple

I've written about Bernard Shaw's play The Devil's Disciple, and seen the Hollywood movie based on it, so I was particularly keen to watch the latest New York revival of this comedy, now showing on Theatre Row.

Gingold Theatrical Group produced this new version, which was adapted and directed by David Staller to feature only five actors--all female--who perform this testosterone-driven tale of the American Revolution with grace and style.

A framing device introduced by Staller shows a young woman who has inherited a house as old as our country, and much like the current United States, badly in need of some serious work. The woman, played by Folami Williams, discovers the house is haunted by numerous ghosts. She then finds the diary of one of the house's first inhabitants, Judith Anderson, wife of a stalwart Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Anthony Anderson.

Williams then takes on the persona of Judith, while the ghosts perform all of the other roles. The cast does an amazing job, with Tina Chilip playing Rev. Anderson, and Nadia Brown playing the bad boy Dick Dudgeon, the titular Devil's Disciple who rebels not just against the British but against his puritan upbringing represented by his mother (played with ice-cold ferocity by Susan Cella). Assorted other roles are filled in by the ever-versatile Teresa Avia Lim, who previously appeared as the Queen of Egypt in GTG's production of Caesar and Cleopatra.

Toward the end of the play, Staller inserts a speech Shaw wrote for a revival of the play starring Maurice Evans, in which America is hailed as "a land that will never be home to kings or tyrants or demagogues." That line lands a little differently post-election than it did before, but perhaps that just means we need it there now more than ever.

The show is playing until November 23rd, so if you haven't seen it yet, go! This is a revival you won't want to miss.

Return to The Shavian

I previously wrote a review of Shaw productions in New York City for The Shavian, the journal of the Britain-based Shaw Society. Well, in the latest issue of the journal, I have a review of this year's conference of the International Shaw Society in Dublin.

Ivan Wise, editor of the Shavian, put together an excellent issue, which includes interviews with director David Grapes and producer Julia Holofceneer, a reflection on Socrates and Saint Joan by Philip Wilson, and a fascinating article by Daniel Ibrahim Abdalla on Shaw's connections to the Harlem Renaissance.

The Shaw Society also helped to put on the wonderful production of Mrs. Warren's Profession I saw this summer at Shaw's Corner, the former home of Bernard Shaw that is now owned by the National Trust. That production was not covered extensively in this issue, which did cover Chipstead Players' production of the Howard Brenton play Lawrence After Arabia (which features Shaw as a character) and Gingold Theatrical Group's production last year of Arms and the Man.

If you're interested in joining the Shaw Society, they're a great group, and you can find more information about them here.

Unmasking Electra

Last night, I attended a virtual talk on Eugene O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra by the mother-daughter team of Carole and Beth Wynstra.

Beth, who is an associate professor at Babson College, noted that her mother Carole, the co-president of the Eugene O'Neill Foundation Board, is a much better parent than the character of Christine in the play. Carole said that's a pretty low bar, being that Christine is an adulterous and murderous fiend.

Masks come up frequently in the play, including in the stage directions. Not only were masks used by actors in ancient Greece, but O'Neill originally intended the play to be performed masked, as was his earlier play The Great God Brown when it premiered in 1926. Later, O'Neill decided to discard the mask idea, and when Mourning Becomes Electra premiered in 1931, it was performed unmasked.

O'Neill based the work on another trilogy, The Oresteia by Aeschylus. However, the story of Electra was also told by other Greek dramatists. Both Wynstras agreed that the version by Sophocles is probably the best. Euripides also wrote a play called Electra, though, which goes a little off the rails in spots. In his version of the story, Electra is forced to marry a peasant, but is later rescued by her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades.

In O'Neill's telling of the story, that doesn't happen, but there's still plenty of room for other varieties of familial dysfunction. As the Mannon family tears itself apart, the action is commented upon by the community. In Greek plays, this would have been done by the chorus. While O'Neill did not introduce a chorus per se, he did provide the character of Seth to provide a choral element, along with several minor characters. Carole noted that the singing of the song "Shenandoah" also adds to the feel of a chorus.

Beth pointed out that the actress who originally played Christine, the Clytemnestra figure in O'Neill's work, also appeared in soap advertisements at the same time as she was featured in the play on Broadway. The actress, Alla Nazimova, seemed to be playing with her own image, both on and off stage, emphasizing her own good looks even as she acknowledged that she was an older woman. Nazimova, by the way, went on to perform other important roles on Broadway, including the Priestess in Bernard Shaw's The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles.

The Electra-like role of Lavinia was originally played on Broadway by Alice Brady, who later performed in numerous Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Apparently, she and Nazimova did not get along. (Neither did their characters, as Lavinia plans her own mother's murder.) Carole mentioned that there was also a film made in 1947 with Rosalind Russell as Lavinia.

Next month, the play is scheduled to run at the Eugene O'Neill Festival in Danville, California. Tickets are already sold out, though, so you'll have to settle for the movie, or perhaps reading the play.

Shaw's Corner

I'm back from the U.K. now, but on my last full day there, I had the good fortune of seeing Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession performed in front of the home of the play's author.

Known as Shaw's Corner, the former home of Bernard and Charlotte Shaw is now owned by the National Trust. Both of the famed departed residents had their ashes placed in the home's magnificent gardens.

On Saturday, I and about 300 other audience members sat on the lawn behind the house to watch the theatre company Shaw2020 perform Shaw's early drama Mrs. Warren's Profession in conjunction with the Shaw Society.

Prior to the performance, the Shaw Society held a fundraiser at the old Palladian Church in Ayot St Lawrence, just a short walk from Shaw's Corner. The Society's distinguished Vice President, Siân Phillips, was interviewed and there was a reception in honor of Shaw's birthday (which was actually on Friday, July 26th).

I got to speak with Dame Phillips, who is perfectly delightful. We discussed Shaw's play John Bull's Other Island, which really ought to be performed more often. She also stayed to watch the production of Mrs. Warren's Profession, which was directed by Jonas Cemm, who also played the villain of the piece, Sir George Crofts.

The staging was quite well done, and I had no trouble hearing the actors, in spite of the fact that they were performing outdoors. Laura Fitzpatrick played Mrs. Warren in a manner that never let you forget her working-class roots, in spite of how much wealth she had acquired. Bethany Blake was absolutely charming as her daughter Vivie.

If you're in the U.K., the production will continue to tour, and is playing at the Theatre at the Tabard in London until August 9th.

Back from Dublin

Yesterday, I got back from Dublin, where I was attending the International Shaw Society's conference on Bernard Shaw's Ireland.

Wednesday morning, I woke up before 5:00 am, jet-lagged, so I walked around a bit before the conference started. That's when I went by the Smock Alley Theatre, the latest in a number of theatres that have been on that street since the 17th century.

The first Theatre Royal on Smock Alley was established by John Ogilby in 1662, not long after the Restoration brought a return of legal drama to Britain and Ireland. The original building was demolished and replaced in 1735.

That second theatre came to be managed by Thomas Sheridan, whose son Richard Brinsley Sheridan later became famous for penning such plays as The School for Scandal. Though the theatre featured such stars as Peg Woffington and Charles Macklin, it eventually closed in 1787.

The building was partially demolished, but some of it got incorporated into a new church beginning in 1811. That church building provides a home for the new Smock Alley Theatre, which opened in 2012. Though quite a long time has passed since the old theatre closed, the new company tries to pay homage to the site's heritage.

Bernard Shaw wasn't born until 1856, so he never attended performances on Smock Alley. Neither did his contemporary, Oscar Wilde, though objects related to both men were on display at the Museum of Literature Ireland, which provided the venue for the conference. It's worth a visit!

Bernard Shaw's Ireland

Today was the last day of the International Shaw Society's conference on Bernard Shaw's Ireland, held by University College Dublin.

On Wednesday, Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel delivered a keynote on Shaw and the 1920s London-Irish Theatre. He noted that the 1919 revival of Arms and the Man began a post-war renewal of interest in Shaw's work on the London stage. This continued throughout the decade with frequent revivals, and in 1929 the Court Theatre premiered a new Shaw play, The Apple Cart.

Next, David Clare chaired a panel on Shaw and Socialism that included Marie Hewelt discussing Pygmalion and Eamon Jordan talking about Widowers' Houses. Audrey McNamara chaired a second session that included Lisa Robertson on John Bull's Other Island and Kumar Parag on Candida. We also had a performance of the discarded defense Shaw wrote for the Irish rebel Roger Casement, and in the evening Paddy O'Keefe performed his one-man show Shaw Invites You.

Thursday morning, Lauretta Lenker delivered a plenary on Shaw and Virginia Woolf, who both coincidentally lived at different times at 29 Fitzroy Square in London. She spoke about Woolf's novel Between the Acts and Shaw's drama Saint Joan. That play was featured prominently in the next talks given by Doborah Payne and Ellen Dolgin, as did Shaw's Geneva. After we broke for lunch, Dorothy Hadfield delivered a second plenary on Charlotte Shaw, and then we heard from Brad Kent and Loic Wright.

I presented my own paper on John Bull's Other Island on Friday morning, accompanied by Mary Christian who discussed The Dark Lady of the Sonnets and Julie Sparks who spoke on Shaw's sequel to A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Tony Roche then delivered a plenary on how Dion Boucicault influenced Shaw, who in turn influenced Brian Friel's play Translations. In the afternoon, both Vishnu Patel and Tae-Yong Eom discussed post-humanism in Back to Methuselah.

The venue for the conference was the Museum of Literature in Ireland, which had some great displays. Tomorrow, I look forward to seeing some of Dublin and then catching a play at the famed Gate Theatre.

History on Stage

Today is the Feast Day of Joan of Arc, a historical figure who has inspired a number of plays, including Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, Jane Anderson's Mother of the Maid, and my own Dark Night of the Soul.

History has always been an inspiration for dramatists, and this Saturday another history-inspired play of mine, Snip o' the Shears, will have a staged reading at the Hamilton Grange branch of the New York Public Library.

Snip o' the Shears is based loosely on accounts of Betsy Ross, the Philadelphia-based upholsterer who according to legend sewed the first modern flag of the Uniter States. She will be portrayed this Saturday by Rebecca Ana Peña. Rachael Langton is directing the reading.

Later this summer, I'll be presenting a paper on plays inspired by historical slave revolts. I'll be discussing J.H. Amherst's The Death of Christophe King of Hayti, as well as W.H. Murray's Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack. This will be at a conference by the British Association for Romantic Studies in Glasgow.

That conference will be in July, and then in August I'll be giving a paper online for the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism on Felicia Hemans' historically inspired play The Vespers of Palermo. Hemans was literally writing about a massacre that occurred in medieval Sicily, but the 1823 play was also referencing the recent turmoil of the French Revolution.

George Gordon Byron wrote dramas inspired by history as well, and this fall I will be speaking on a panel at the annual Curran Symposium, co-sponsored this year by the Keats-Shelley Association of America and the Byron Society of America. The roundtable I'll be on will discuss Red Bull Theater's staged reading of Byron's Sardanapalus, about the ancient Assyrian king.

That's a long ways off yet, but I hope you can join me for the reading on Saturday. After that, I'll be off to a conference in Dublin... but more on that later!

The Victorian Shaw

The latest issue of SHAW has been guest edited by Mary Christian on Bernard Shaw as a Victorian, and it includes some provocative pieces, including an article of my own on The Devil's Disciple.

In her introduction to the issue, Christian notes that critics have considered Shaw as both a product of Victorianism and a rebel against it. I suspect that both are correct. The issue has articles by some of my favorite Shaw critics, including Ellen Dolgin, Jean Reynolds, and Christopher Wixson.

My own article "Subverting the Melodramatic in The Devil's Disciple" looks at the very first theatre review Shaw wrote as a critic for the Saturday Review, and how his criticisms of Sydney Grundy's play Slaves of the Ring paved the way for his own engagements with melodrama. I argue that The Devil's Disciple comically subverts not just Victorian melodrama, but Victorian conventions of marriage itself.

This fall, Gingold Theatrical Group plans to revive The Devil's Disciple Off-Broadway on Theatre Row from October 15th to November 23rd. Being as it's probably my favorite Shaw play, I am looking forward to it immensely. If GTG's production of Arms and the Man last year is any indication, it should be quite a show.

Next month, I'll be attending the International Shaw Society's conference in Dublin on Bernard Shaw's Ireland. It's scheduled to include talks by Christian and Dolgin, as well as such noted Shaw scholars as Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel, Dorothy Hadfield, and Vishnu Patil. It should be great!

John Bull's Other Island

Last night, I took part in a spirited public discussion of Bernard Shaw's play John Bull's Other Island sponsored by the W.B. Yeats Society of New York and hosted by Gingold Theatrical Group.

William Butler Yeats commissioned Shaw to write the play for the group that eventually became the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Plays by Yeats and Shaw had previously been staged together at the Avenue Theatre in London, when Yeats's The Land of Heart's Desire was performed as a short curtain raiser before the premiere of Shaw's Arms and the Man.

The stipulation was that the play should have an Irish theme, and Shaw at first struggled to write it. In a letter to Lady Gregory, one of Yeats's artistic partners in founding the Abbey Theatre, Shaw wrote in June of 1904 that he had "Not a word of the play yet on paper" but he was "Seething in the brain." The play he eventually came up with had four acts and six different scenes, which would have undoubtedly been a challenge for the small company just trying to start out in the world.

At the end of August, Shaw wrote to Yeats to see if the new theatre might have "a hydraulic bridge" to accomplish the two scene changes that occurred in the middle of acts. Eventually he did finish the play, but it proved to be too long and difficult to stage for the company. The "inevitable cutting" Yeats wrote back, would adversely affect the "seriousness" of the play. Ultimately, the theatre allowed Shaw to look for another home for the piece.

This was not difficult, as Shaw was a successful playwright by 1904, and John Bull's Other Island was premiered instead by the Royal Court Theatre in London, with the actor Harley Granville Barker playing the defrocked priest Peter Keegan.

Top Plays of 2023

Once again, I'm compiling a list of the top ten plays I saw in New York City that opened in 2023.

Last year, the musical Paradise Square topped my list, though critics were mixed in their reviews of the show, and it ended up closing at a financial loss.

Alas, I can't claim that this is the year theatre came back in New York, but a number of good shows did open in 2023, a couple of which are still running, so see them while you can!

10. The Smuggler - Irish Rep had an ambitious season this year, but the best thing I saw there was a very small show, Ronán Noone's one-man verse drama about a Massachusetts bar tender who ends up getting involved in human trafficking.

9. The School for Scandal - Hudson Classical Theatre Company continued its tradition this year of bringing solid productions of classical plays to the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park. This year's staging of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal brought together delightful acting with a creative costume design.

8. The Mind Mangler - This year the team that brought us The Play That Goes Wrong opened a new show in their franchise featuring Henry Lewis as an inept mentalist. The show is funny, which I expected, but also successfully pulls off a couple of brilliant magic tricks, which I wasn't expecting. Best of all, though, it has a tremendous heart that is no illusion at all. (Still playing!)

7. Crumbs from the Table of Joy - Keen Company's revival of Lynn Nottage's break-out play from 1995 was another unexpected delight, in part due to the performance of Shanel Bailey as Ernestine, a young woman in 1950s New York struggling to deal with changes both in the world and in her own family. Bailey definitely had a good year in 2023, as she appeared in another great revival on my list as well.

6. The Knight of the Burning Pestle - I directed this Jacobean classic when I was in college, so I knew I'd have to see a co-production by Red Bull and Fiasco Theater. Paco Tolson led the cast as a grocer's apprentice who becomes the titular Knight of the Burning Pestle. What made the piece a sheer joy, however, was the interaction of the ensemble, including Ben Steinfeld, Royer Bokus, and Teresa Avia Lim.

5. Here We Are - Stephen Sondheim's collaboration with David Ives finally made it to the stage this year. Even with flawed direction, the piece soars with a cast that includes Jeremy Shamos, Amber Gray, Bobby Cannavale, Rachel Bay Jones, Steven Pasquale, Micaela Diamond, and David Hyde Pierce. Whether or not you've seen any of the surrealist films of Luis Buñuel that inspired the piece, you should be able to appreciate the play's existential musings on modern life. Hurry to see the show before it closes on January 21st.

4. Arms and the Man - Shanel Bailey came back to Theatre Row this fall to appear as Raina in Gingold Theatrical Group's magnificent production of Shaw's anti-war classic Arms and the Man. Director David Staller brought together a wonderful cast that also included Keshav Moodliar, Ben Davis, Delphi Borich, Thomas Jay Ryan, Evan Zes, and Karen Ziemba. As someone who is a fan of toy theatres, I also loved the set designed by Lindsay G. Fuori to resemble a paper stage from the Victorian era. I'm looking forward to seeing what GTG does next in 2024!

3. Hamlet - The Public Theater chose Kenny Leon to direct the last production of Shakespeare in the Park before the Delacorte Theatre is shut down for renovations. Beowulf Boritt's set playfully echoed the one he previously designed for Leon's Much Ado About Nothing. The biggest joy, though, was seeing famed Shakespearean actor John Douglas Thompson play the most engrossing Claudius I've ever seen. Ato Blankson-Wood was able to hold his own as young Prince Hamlet, and the cast also included Lorraine Toussaint as Gertrude, Daniel Pearce as Polonius, and Solea Pfeiffer as Ophelia.

2. The Great Gatsby - The immersive production of The Great Gatsby was criminally underrated. The piece contained a couple of more traditional scenes, such as the tea Jay Gatsby prepared for Daisy, where the entire audience was assembled in one place. What was most interesting, though, was the way we were all divided into small groups to wander through side scenes, having interactions with various characters, sometimes with other audience members, and sometimes one-on-one. The live music was an added bonus. Sadly, the show closed in New York, but there's a chance it might come back, if not here, in another city.

1. Becomes a Woman - My top choice this year is likely to surprise a lot of people, but the Mint Theater Company performed an immense service in bringing Betty Smith's long forgotten play to the stage at last. Before Smith penned her 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she wrote Becomes a Woman, but this was 1931, and no theatre wanted to touch a play with a feminist bent so far ahead of its time. In the Mint's long overdue production, Emma Pfitzer Price starred as Francie Nolan, a character whose name Smith later used as the heroine of her classic novel. Other strong performances were delivered by Jeb Brown, Peterson Townsend, Gina Daniels, Jason O'Connell, and Duane Boutté.

So that's my list! I'm looking forward to more great theatre in 2024.

Arms and the Man

I just got back from seeing Gingold Theatrical Group's magnificently fun production of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man on Theatre Row.

The set, splendidly designed by Lindsay G. Fuori, is meant to resemble a Victorian toy theatre, something I've written about on this blog in the past. When Shaw later wrote a screenplay based on his play, he imagined a filmed version that looked like it was taking place on a toy stage, and that is what you'll see in the present production.

Shanel Bailey, who was wonderful earlier this year in the revival of Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy, plays Raina, the romantic young woman who hides a soldier in her bedroom in the aftermath of a battle. Keshav Moodliar plays the soldier, who drives much of the action of the play, and gains the affections of Raina in spite of her engagement to a dashing but dim Major Sergius Saranoff, played by Ben Davis.

Other strong performances are delivered by Delphi Borich, Thomas Jay Ryan, Evan Zes, and Karen Ziemba, the last of whom previously played the title role in GTG's Mrs. Warren's Profession in 2021. Director David Staller brings the whole thing together with style and grace.

The production closes on Saturday, so see it while you can!

Reviewing Utopia

The latest issue of the journal Shaw is now out, and it includes a book review I wrote of Siân Adiseshiah's new book Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre.

Adiseshiah's full-length study of how dramatists have staged utopia naturally has a chapter on Bernard Shaw, whose Back to Methuselah is a classic work of utopian literature. She also delves into some other plays by the writer, however, including The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles and Farfetched Fables.

I enjoyed the rest of the book, as well, which includes studies of Aristophanes and other writers of Old Comedy, as well as the early modern author Margaret Cavendish. British dramatist Howard Brenton also gets his own chapter. Though he isn't produced much today, I'll be talking about his play Bloody Poetry in January when I deliver a paper on Lord Byron's impact on modern drama at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association.

The journal has full-length articles by Bernard Dukore (whom I met this summer at a Shaw conference at the College of William and Mary), Michel Pharand, Brigitte Bogar, Kay Li, and others. It looks like editor Christopher Wixson has put together a wonderful issue. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Shaw Does His Bit

The summer issue of The Shavian includes an article by Michael Waters about performances of some of Bernard Shaw's World War I plays, including his hysterical one-act comedy Augustus Does His Bit.

Shaw had already publicly come out against the war (and was roundly condemned for it), but when the Anglo-Belgian actress Lalla Vandervelde appealed to him to write a play to raise funds for the people of Belgium, he obliged.

The resulting play, Augustus Does His Bit, was a send-up not of war, but of the bureaucracy that is the bane of every soldier. The play was produced in London in January of 1917 as the war was raging, and it poked fun at the incompetence that had led to so much pointless loss of life.

Critics took issue with the play, but apparently audiences loved it. The actor F.B.J. Sharp played the meticulously fussy Lord Augustus Highcastle while Vandervelde played the mysterious lady who shows up at his office to steal government secrets from right under his nose. Fortunately, everything turns out fine, but not before Augustus is made a fool of and the audience is thoroughly entertained.

After the war ended, there continued to be a smattering of performances. St. Paul's school in Coventry put the play on in 1922, as did Dundee Training College the following year. In 1924 the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead put the piece on, together with Shaw's one-act play The Man of Destiny which has a similarly absurd depiction of Napoleon. The critics were unimpressed, perhaps because the play's moment had passed and people no longer wanted to think about the war.

Today, though, Shaw's satire sparkles, and the play calls out for performance, as does another Shaw one-act play about the war, O'Flaherty VC.