Year's Work in Shaw

The Year's Work in English Studies is not a publication I generally review. By the time it comes out, the "year" is two years ago, but it can help in keeping up with recent trends.

Recently, a colleague in the International Shaw Society alerted me to a chapter in it written by Claudio Francesco Favazza, published this month, called "Modern Literature: George Bernard Shaw."

Much of the chapter is taken up by a review of a special issue of Shaw edited by Mary Christian on "Victorian Shaw." I wrote a piece for the issue on The Devil's Disciple, which Favazza astutely summarized:

A comparable concern with formal innovation and transformation underlies James Armstrong’s ‘Subverting the Melodramatic in The Devil’s Disciple’ (ShawR 44:i[2024] 48–61). Armstrong argues that in The Devil’s Disciple [1897] Shaw both adopts and overturns the conventions of Victorian melodrama, using them not for sensation but to expose the illusions of respectability, marriage and social order. He notes that the familiar opposition between a woman’s legal marriage and a ‘true’ marriage with another man—a theme common in melodrama—is here recast to question the legitimacy of marriage itself.

My interest in melodrama should be well known to anyone who reads this blog regularly. (I recently wrote a post about Augustin Daly's Under the Gaslight.) Though Victorian melodramas are rarely read or performed today, they can tell us a lot about the development of theatrical techniques. Favazza notes this, continuing:

Comparing the play with Sydney Grundy’s Slaves of the Ring [1894], the first melodrama Shaw reviewed, Armstrong shows how Shaw moves beyond conventional moral contrasts. Unlike Grundy’s heroine, who acts under illusion, Judith acts consciously, making her near-adultery all the more destabilizing. Armstrong also points out that the play resists the redemptive closure typical of the genre: Dick Dudgeon’s willingness to die is not an act of romantic sacrifice but a deliberate rejection of social norms. As he observes, Shaw even opposed stage interpretations that sentimentalized the relationship between Judith and Dick. In this way, Armstrong concludes, Shaw transforms melodrama’s emotional energy into a medium for cultural and ideological revolt. 

That's a fair assessment of the article. It's nice to know my work is getting read.

Constancy Unrewarded

Faithfulness to a job has always been a fool's errand. Constancy is inevitably unrewarded. In fact, "Constancy Unrewarded" is the subtitle of Bernard Shaw's comical blank-verse drama The Admirable Bashville.

Shaw wrote the piece as a mocking adaptation of his most famous novel, Cashel Byron's Profession. Of course, Shaw is known as a dramatist, not a novelist. Being Shaw's most famous novel is like being the most popular kid on the math team. It's hardly something brag-worthy.

After being rejected by nearly every publisher in Britain, Shaw had the piece published in a socialistic periodical. The novelist Robert Louis Stevenson thought the best thing about the book was a footman named Bashville, who falls rather hopelessly in love with his aristocratic employer, Lydia Carew.

The relations between wealthy patrons and a servant class hardly even deemed human is on display on Broadway right now, not in an unlikely revival of The Admirable Bashville, but in the imported Korean musical Maybe Happy Ending, which I finally caught up with last week. Though ostensibly a futuristic piece of science fiction, the play skewers the relationships the wealthy have with the people they employ so long as it's convenient for them.

In Maybe Happy Ending, we are introduced first to Oliver, a Model 3 robot who has been left by his former owner James in what appears to be a studio apartment where he can listen to records and enjoy a lifetime subscription to Jazz Monthly. Oliver's orderly routine is interupted by the robot across the hall, a Model 5 named Claire, who in spite of her more convincing human-like manner has a less robust battery than the Model 3s and requires frequent charging.

Just as Bashville's love for Lydia can never be reciprocated, Oliver will forever pine for James, the former owner he idolizes. In Shaw's story, Lydia feels a tinge of guilt for not being able to reward her servant's constancy. Similarly, James in Maybe Happy Ending feels such remorse for having to retire his outmoded Model 3 that he sets Oliver up in what he hopes will be a humane resting place for retired robots, even though it's essentially just a glorified warehouse for unwanted junk.

Even more poignant in the musical is the story of Claire, the Model 5 who knocks on Oliver's door. Her former owner gifted her designer clothes and even a car. (Model 3s can't drive, but 5s can.) She is aware, however, that the woman she served did this because she is rich, not because she actually cares about her. Shaw's admirable servant eventually professes love for his employer, but robots like Claire are apparently incapable of love. We learn that Claire received a profession of love from her owner's husband, which led to the humans warehousing her so they could deal with their own messed-up relationship.

The thing is, while our society might treat employees like robots, we are in fact capable of love, pain, regret, and all of the other emotions our owners (oh, wait, employers) can experience. In Maybe Happy Ending, Oliver and Claire do eventually fall in love, or at least think they do. Being that both are now obsolete and replacement parts are no longer being manufactured, their time together is limited, though. Eventually, both will run out of battery life.

Today, A.I. thieves and other wealthy exploiters are making workers across the world increasingly obsolete. Offers of early retirement or retraining to older workers betrayed by the system they helped to build and maintain often seem like little more than warehousing for old robots. Perhaps it eases the consciences of those with power, but if we are to discover our own maybe happy endings, it will have to be on our own.

It seems there is no more help for the victims of economic exploitation in real life than there is for the discarded servants of fiction.

Sub

Last night, I caught Alex Aguirre's underwater workplace comedy Sub, about coworkers in a dystopian future selling arms to private militia groups from a submarine on a mostly submerged planet earth.

Mitchell Polonsky directed the piece at Erf Gallery, which is in an off-the-beaten-path part of Bushwick. The audience sits on both sides of a long, narrow set, designed by Owen Versteeg to evoke a futuristic submarine.

At one end of the set is a rack of the latest post-apocalyptic fashions designed by nepo baby Freya, played wonderfully by Addie Guidry. At the other end is a steel drum containing weapons manufacturer Peter, played by the magnificent Nick Walther.

We learn the reason Peter is in the drum is that he had both his legs cut off by Freya's father, a nasty powerbroker on which they both must rely. He consoles himself by popping pills and swilling an insane amount of liquor, but the audience later finds out that these are merely placebos.

For her part, Freya has to contend both with her daddy issues and her powerful frenemy, Chloë Chimera, played eerily by Chloe Claudel with the aid of a microphone that electronically alters her voice. Chloë claims to be "post-human" and freed from the conventional morals of an obsolete humanity. The character reminded me quite a bit of some of the post-human imaginings of Bernard Shaw in Back to Methuselah and Farfetched Fables.

Other than Freya and Peter, the only other employee on the sub is Arnold, a splendidly clad but ineffectual security officer played by Jonah O'Hara David. The crew does receive periodic visits from Chloë's husband, a fellow warlord named Barnaby Miller who apes the film noir villains of the past. (Just don't call it his "bit" if you want to live long!) Santiago Mallan is both comic and menacing as Barnaby, who inhabits his retro persona out of a terror of having to deal with the world in which he actually lives.

Chloë has no such difficulties, having fully embraced a world in which human emotions can only prove weaknesses. Having adapted her body to the technology that alters her voice, she's already on her way to becoming a computer, like the one that steers and protects the sub. ("Emily" voiced by Wendy McColm.) All of the cast members are imaginatively costumed by designer Olivia Vaughn Heren, though Chloë's outfits are the most impressive and least human looking.

Ultimately, though, the play is about humanity, and Freya and Peter share an oddly touching moment at the end that reminds us how in dark times hope can be one of the most subversive elements to remain in the bitter remnants of a failed society.

The show is running this weekend only, so see it while you can!

Cashel Byron's Profession

I've blogged about how I received the Constable & Co. collection of the works of Bernard Shaw previously owned by noted scholar Chuck Berst, kindly shipped to me by his widow Roelina, who left in place all of the slips of paper where her late husband had noted something interesting.

Recently I was reading not a Shaw play, but one of the author's novels, Cashel Byron's Profession. The title, much like Mrs. Warren's Profession, hints that the seemingly respectable main character might have gained money and status in a less-than-respectable way. Instead of running a string of brothels like Mrs. Warren, however, Cashel Byron is a prizefighter.

The always insightful Chuck Berst had stuck slips of paper in Chapter VI of the novel, and had as a further help marked in pencil some key passages in which Cashel espouses an active philosophy of executive power. It might be tempting to attribute the character's views to Shaw himself, who later showed not just a tolerance for but even an admiration of authoritarian leaders such as Joseph Stalin. Here's a bit of the first marked passage:

Suppose you walked along the street and saw a man beating a woman, and setting a bad example to the roughs. Well, you would be bound to set a good example to them; and, if youre men, youd like to save the woman; but you couldn't do it by merely living; for that would be setting the bad example of passing on and leaving the poor creature to be beaten. What is it that you need to know, then, so as to be able to act up to your ideas? Why, you want to know how to hit him, when to hit him, and where to hit him; and then you want the nerve to go in and do it. Thats executive power; and thats whats wanted worse than sitting down and thinking... 

To Cashel, this is just common sense. However, readers today might recognize the same self-righteous mentality that allowed the Soviets to slaughter millions of people in an effort to "set a good example" for humanity. Stalin, after all, had asked his followers to "act up to" their ideals by killing others as well as frequently getting killed themselves. Perhaps most telling is that the prizefighter advocates knowing how, when, and where to hit and likens this to the executive power wielded by individuals and nations alike.

A few pages later, in another section flagged by an old piece of paper courtesy of Chuck Berst, the character makes the political analogy explicit. What is more, Shaw's prizefighter belittles those who struggle and strive to better the world without the necessary force to back themselves up and the necessary will to use that force when it might be effective. Here's another passage I found bracketed in pencil:

All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake; not because it isnt a good thing to improve the world if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling is the worst way you could set about doing anything. It gives a man a bad style, and weakens him. It shews that he dont believe in himself much.

For those who might mistake a character for his author, this defense of executive power might seem pretty damning. Things look even worse for Shaw when later in the book he explicitly mentions eugenics, a concept most people today rightfully find abhorrent, though it was a common article of faith for many people (on both the left and the right) back in Shaw's day.

Toward the end of Chapter XIV, the heroine Lydia Carew explains to her cousin that since her "body is frail" and her "brain morbidly active" it makes sense that she marry "a man strong in body and untroubled in mind" since "it is a plain proposition in eugenics."

Before condemning Shaw for supporting a debunked ideology, however, it's important to read the rest of the book. In the final chapter of Cashel Byron's Profession, the narrator says of Lydia Carew: "Her children, so carefully planned by her to inherit her intelligence with their father's robustness, proved to her that heredity is not so simple a matter..." Instead, the boys inherit her own lack of athletic aptitude while the girls take after their father's impetuousness.

So while Lydia has faith in eugenics, the narrator most definitely does not. Of course, the narrator does not necessarily represent Shaw's opinions either, but the ending of Cashel Byron's Profession would seem to caution us against making too many assumptions about the author.

Into the Light

Marc Castle's new play Into the Light (which I'm directing) opens tonight, so get your tickets while you can!

In addition to writing the play, Marc Castle is starring as Sol, a newly departed soul who arrives in the hereafter only to find that none of the people waiting for him there are the ones he expected. Marc's previous plays have been done at EST, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and La Mama. In another age, he toured as a child actor in the first national company of the musical Camelot. He later wrote about it in his one-man show One Brief Shining Moment.

Acting opposite Marc is Terri Campion, who also wrote My Girl, one of the one-acts going up together with Into the Light. She's perhaps best known for her novel, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, but she also has a long list of acting credits, including Hetty in Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones at Metropolitan Playhouse and Clytemnestra in Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis with Greeks & Company.

Ralph Pachoda appears in the play as Jake, an old acquaintance of Sol's. Ralph is a regular at ARTC's weekly developmental workshop, but he also has had a long career as a classical actor. He appeared Off-Broadway as Creon opposite James Earl Jones in Oedipus by Sophocles. He also did a national tour of Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly with Maryanne Plunkett.

Rounding out the cast is Jeannie Dalton, who plays Sol's mother Goldie. She's a brilliant comic actress who has played everything from Dunyasha in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to Raina in Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man to Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Fanny in Eric Overmyer's On the Verge to Elmire in Moliere's Tartuffe. 

After tonight, we have only three more performances as part of the Two by Four festival playing at HB Studio's 124 Bank Street Theater. We're on again tomorrow, January 24th at 7pm, Sunday the 25th at 3pm, and then our final performance is on Tuesday the 27th at 7pm. I hope to see you there!

Wrapping Up MLA

Today was the last day of the annual convention of the Modern Language Association. I was only able to attend virtually, but I enjoyed many of the thoughtful discussions online.

Thursday, I attended a session on Automation, AI, and the Future of Contingent Teaching. Predictably, there were numerous technical problems, and the chair was never able to get onto Zoom to lead the session.

Friday, I caught a session called Early Modern Women’s Violence. They didn't have any technical problems. (Perhaps the Zoom gremlins were afraid of all those violent early modern women.) I particularly enjoyed learning about Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of France's Henry IV, and a broad you didn't mess with... unless you wanted to find yourself on the wrong end of a broadsword.

There was also an interesting session on Saturday about Approaches to Teaching Arthurian Literature, but the real reason I was attending MLA this year was because I was chairing a session this morning on Shavian Family Resemblances. Unfortunately, Dibasi Roy couldn't join us, but Alice Clapié from Columbia University shared some interesting information on Bernard Shaw's review of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Dan Stuart of Texas Tech also delivered an excellent paper on the censorship of Mrs. Warren's Profession, including the tidbit that Shaw considered changing Mrs. Warren's titular profession from prostitution to pickpocketing in order to get around the censors.

In the afternoon, I attended a session on Global Encounters, Translations, and Transformations in the Comedia. The speakers shared a lot of information on relationships with the New World during the Spanish Golden Age of literature. Medardo Rosario from Florida International University spoke on Lope de Vega's play about Christopher Columbus (which I have read) and a Tirso de Molina play on the conquistador Francisco Pizarro (which I have not read, but now want to). In Todo es dar en una cosa, Tirso apparently focuses on Pizarro's rise from poverty to glory, but mostly ignores the indigenous people of Peru he conquered.

The other speakers on that panel were interesting as well. Jose Estrada of Carnegie Mellon University talked about a Nahuatl translation of Lope's La madre de la mejor, which tells the story of the parents of the Virgin Mary. Rebecca Smith from UCLA then discussed another religious play, Sacrificio de Isaac, which was adapted into Nahuatl and then translated back into Spanish.

If you missed these talks but are an MLA member registered for the conference, they were all recorded and should be available to view for a limited time.

Coming in January

January is one of those months that seems to always feel longer than it really is, though this January I have so many things going on that I'm afraid it will fly by this year.

First up is the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, which begins tomorrow. I will not be traveling to Toronto this year, but I will be chairing an online panel on Shavian Family Resemblances.

The online session will apply the MLA Presidential Theme of Family Resemblances to the plays and critical writings of the dramatist Bernard Shaw. It will examine the fictional families in Shaw’s plays as well as the larger Anglo-Irish literary family of writers Shaw belonged to and resembled, even as he clashed with them.

In “‘People with unimproved minds’: Shavian Fathers and Resistance to the Ideal Paterfamilias,” Dibasi Roy will look at the early comedies of Shaw to examine the discursive construction of Late Victorian fatherhood, including how multidimensional aspects of masculinities intersect in varied and complex ways. 

Alice Clapie will examine resemblances among Shaw’s family of Irish writers in “Eugenic Laughter, Universal Laughter: Shaw’s Physiological Dramaturgy.” The paper will explore the uncomfortable notion of “eugenic laughter” in Shaw’s physiological dramaturgy, acknowledging the popularity of eugenics for social progress at the turn of the 20th century, when it was an important crux in the discussion of familial issues.

In the third paper, Dan Stuart will analyze the controversies behind Shaw’s most infamous family drama in “Reconsidering the Unpleasant: Victorian Morality and the Censorship of Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” The play, among Shaw’s most socially significant works, dealt with the then-controversial subject of prostitution, foregrounding the mitigating factors underlying the trade’s proliferation while exploring conflicting attitudes about gender roles and social mobility in Late Victorian society.

Later this month, American Renaissance Theater Company will be presenting Two by Four, two presentations of one-act plays at 124 Bank Street Theater. (If you're looking for the address of 124 Bank Street Theater, it is, in fact, 124 Bank Street.) Presentation A will include Mutual Bond by Mark Levine, Choose! by Bara Swain, Gators by Linda Kampley, and My Handiwork by Robert Kerr. Presentation B will include My Girl by Terri Campion, Eye of the Beholder by Kathryn Grant, The New Pasteur by Michael McGoldrick, and Into the Light by Marc Castle.

I'm directing Into the Light, which stars the author, Marc Castle, as a dead man who meets other departed souls in the afterlife, but not the ones he expected to find. It also features Terri Campion, Jeannie Dalton, and Ralph Pachoda. Today, I had a chance to check out the theater, which is run by HB Studio. It's a great space, and I look forward to having my directorial work there.

Presentation B will be going up January 23rd at 7pm, January 24th at 7pm, January 25th at 3pm, and January 27th at 7pm. Tickets are $25 for general admission. I hope you can come!

Top Shows of 2025

Anyone who remembers the New York theatre scene from before the dreaded covid shutdown knows that this city has yet to fully recover. Theatre today is simply less ambitious, less imaginative, and less interesting than it was before 2020.

Still, there are some exceptions. Last year, there were a few remarkable shows that made my annual top-ten list, including Broadway's re-imagining of The Great Gatsby and a new production of the Giuseppi Verdi classic La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera.

This year, I have a new list of the best shows I saw in New York City that opened since January 1st. That doesn't include some of the excellent productions I saw outside of New York, including Sunday in the Park with George in Pittsburgh or Dear Liar in Niagara-on-the-Lake, not to mention my own workshop of After an Earlier Incident at Theatre of Western Springs.

10. Nongod - This trio of one-act plays by Leon Lone was a pleasant surprise. Seeing ancient deities from Egypt, Russia, and Mexico come to life on stage turned out to be both funny and emotionally engaging.

9. The Wild Duck - Ibsen classics other than A Doll House or Hedda Gabler are few and far between in the U.S., so I was delighted that Theatre for a New Audience announced they would reviving The Wild Duck. Maaike Laanstra-Corn gave a striking portrayal of Hedwig.

8. The Lady From the Sea - What was I saying about Ibsen classics? Even better was Susane Lee's adaptation of The Lady From the Sea, performed appropriately right on the Hudson River. Lee reset the play in Canada, but kept its spirit, and the outdoor venue was delightful.

7. Pygmalion - Gingold Theatrical Group always does a good job with their shows, and this year's production of Bernard Shaw's most famous comedy was no exception. Synnøve Karlsen, now famous as young Cassie from television's Miss Austen, made her New York debut as the irrepressible Eliza Doolittle.

6. Kowalski - Gregg Ostrin's play about an imagined meeting between Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando was a hit Off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street. There have been plans to move it to Broadway. If that happens, you'll want to see it. In addition to probing into the creation of the American classic A Streetcar Named Desire, it's a great vehicle for two fine actors.

5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - While it's true that the second act wasn't as good as the first, this new opera based on the Michael Chabon novel of the same name still wowed audiences, in part due to sets and projections by 59 Studio. Fortunately, it's coming back this spring, so if you missed it in the fall, you can still catch it at the Met beginning February 17.

4. Wine in the Wilderness - Classic Stage Company had been planning this revival of the classic Alice Childress drama for quite some time. With direction by LaChanze, it hit all the right notes. The set designed by Arnulfo Maldonado wrapped the audience around the action, making the riot outside feel shockingly close, and Grantham Coleman once again gave an amazing performance.

3. The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse - Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley's new musical perfectly channels pop music from earlier in the century while telling a story of the Internet stardom (and helldom) of today. The New Group deserves kudos for bringing it to Off-Broadway audiences, and for featuring some incredibly gifted young performers, including Patrick Nathan Falk, Keri René Fuller, Luke Islam, and Milly Shapiro.

2. Dead Outlaw - An even better new musical that premiered this year on Broadway (transferring from an Off-Broadway run last year) was Dead Outlaw, which tells the fascinating real-life story of Elmer McCurdy, who literally couldn't pull off a crime to save his life. Itamar Moses, David Yazbek, and Erik Della Penna were able to hilariously tell the tale while at the same time evoking scenes of sheer pathos. Like Yazbek's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, this show deserves a long afterlife with regional and community theatres.

1. Moby-Dick - The best show I saw this year, though, has to be Jake Heggie's opera Moby-Dick, which made its Met premiere earlier this year. Though the piece first premiered at the Dallas Opera 15 years ago, this was the first time New York audiences were able to see and hear it live. Having written my own stage adaptation of the Herman Melville novel, I have lots of opinions on how to best stage the story, but the union of sets and projections seemed flawless in this staging, and the music is some of Heggie's best. The tenor Brandon Jovanovich also made a profound Captain Ahab.

That's the list. I know! Two operas and only a single work from the Broadway stage, and that one which premiered Off-Broadway first. The dynamics of New York theatre are certainly changing.

Gods-Given Comedy

Last night I finally caught up with Gingold Theatrical Group's production of Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw. This new staging by director David Staller imagines a pantheon of gods looking down on Henry Higgins as they bring his "creation" to life.

Mark Evans plays Higgins, the socially awkward expert in phonetics who finds a flower girl and bets he can pass her off as a duchess. That flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, is performed by television star Synnøve Karlsen, who shows Liza's evolution from calling out "Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-oo!" to articulating some of the finest language Shaw ever wrote.

The rest of the cast play white-clad gods who relate the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, as told by Ovid, and then perform all of the other roles. Just as the mythical Pygmalion carved a statue and prayed to the gods to bring her to life, Higgins teaches Eliza correct speech but worries that there's something missing. He takes her to an "at home" day of his mother (played brilliantly by Lizan Mitchell) in hopes that he can find that intangible quality she's missing.

This scene was the highlight of the show for me. Karlsen manages to get so many of the manners of respectable society right while at the same time getting everything horribly wrong. The always game Carson Elrod plays Colonel Pickering, Higgins's partner in phonetical crime, while Matt Wolpe plays the visiting twit Freddy Eynsford Hill and Teresa Avia Lim takes on the role of his obnoxious sister Clara. After Eliza makes a less-than-stellar impression, uttering the dreaded "b-word" on her way out, we believe Mrs. Higgins when she says, "if you suppose for a moment that she doesnt give herself away in every sentence she utters, you must be perfectly cracked about her."

Higgins, it turns out, is perfectly cracked about her, but not in the way everybody thinks. Shaw rewrote the ending to Pygmalion multiple times, and Staller gives us yet another ending, in which the cold, remote Higgins just begins to crawl out of his shell at the end. It's a refreshing change from both overly romanticized and overly cynical versions of the story in recent years.

Pygmalion is playing at Theatre Row until November 22nd, so get your tickets now! There's also a companion event at the American Irish Historical Society tomorrow at 6pm. I'll definitely be there.

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.