Shaw, George Bernard

Shaw, George Bernard (1856–1950), playwright. The most famous and possibly the most controversial of 20th‐century English dramatists was described by the Times in its review of the first major American production of Arms and the Man as “the eccentric and able London socialist, essayist, music critic, Ibsenite, and wearer of gray flannel clothes.” With occasional shadings of difference, critical opinion of Shaw in America has remained much the same ever since. Especially in early years his subjects offended many playgoers and critics, dealing as they did with such matters as prostitution, religious hypocrisy, slum landlordism, profiteering, and, of course, socialism. In these early years his most noted exponents included Richard Mansfield and Arnold Daly, while in after seasons the Theatre Guild regularly offered even his minor plays. The last several decades have witnessed fewer Shaw works on Broadway but a marked increase Off Broadway and in regional venues. Caesar and Cleopatra, Candida, The Devil's Disciple, Man and Superman, Pygmalion, and Saint Joan each has its own entry. A thumbnail history of some other Shaw works in America follows.

The short comedy Androcles and the Lion, twitting early Christians, was hissed at its 1913 London premiere but received a cordial welcome when Harley Granville‐Barker presented it in New York in 1915 with O. P. Heggie as Androcles. The major American revivals occurred in 1925, when the Theatre Guild presented it with Henry Travers as the hero and such superior players as Romney Brent, Clare Eames, Tom Powers, and Edward G. Robinson in supporting roles, and in 1946 when the American Repertory Theatre offered it with Ernest Truex in the lead. Arms and the Man, Shaw's beguiling spoof of militarism, was his first play presented in America. Mansfield played the antihero Bluntschli in 1894, and William Winter thought his performance “a delicious piece of mystification, crisp in speech and diversified by airy nonchalance and whimsical humor.” Never one to proclaim Shaw, Winter admitted the script “causes thought as well as mirth.” A major revival was in 1925 when the Theatre Guild presented Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in the leads. Howard Lindsay recalled Lunt's Bluntschli as “cold, precise, hard and. . . probably one of the greatest high‐comedy performances any actor, American or British, has given in our time.” Of Shaw's most accessible works, Arms and the Man has often been seen in New York since the 1920s but has not enjoyed any outstanding productions. Many Americans know the play best through its musical version, the Viennese operetta The Chocolate Soldier. The Doctor's Dilemma, a comedy about egocentricity and medical ethics, was first produced in New York by Arnold Daly in 1915. The first major revival was by the Theatre Guild in 1927 with a remarkable cast that included Helen Westley, Dudley Digges, Earle Larimore, Fontanne, and Lunt as Dubedat. Many critics felt the acting was superior to the play. A change in emphasis came in 1941 when Katharine Cornell revived the work, playing Jennifer Dubedat with support from Raymond Massey and Bramwell Fletcher. The Phoenix Theatre mounted the play in 1955 with Roddy MacDowall as the doomed artist. The Theatre Guild's 1920 mounting of Heartbreak House provided that play's belated premiere. This look at a modern Armageddon seems to have spoken eloquently to a world where a major war is always looming and so has been offered a number of fine revivals. Orson Welles, dressed to resemble Shaw, played Shotover in the Mercury Theatre's 1938 mounting, while Maurice Evans assumed the role in a 1959 production and Rex Harrison played it in an abridged but superb 1983 revival at the Circle in the Square.

Grace George presented and starred in the 1915 American premiere of Major Barbara, the play about big business and warmongering, offering a notable cast of famous or soon‐to‐be‐famous theatrical names, including Clarence Derwent, Guthrie McClintic, Ernest Lawford, John Cromwell, Mary Nash, and Conway Tearle. It was welcomed at the time as “a provocative, often richly amusing and continuously stimulating comedy.” Major revivals have included a 1928 Theatre Guild presentation; an exceptionally successful 1956 production, which ran seven months, with Glynis Johns and Charles Laughton in the leads; and a well‐acted Broadway revival in 2001 with Cherry Jones as Barbara. Mrs. Warren's Profession, the play about prostitution that prompted court action in 1905, both during its New Haven tryout and in New York, starred Arnold Daly, who was also the producer, and Mary Shaw. Both were arrested but were acquitted of charges of presenting an immoral play. However, the work proved more sensational than durable, revivals being infrequent and short‐lived. Uta Hagen headed a fine 1985 revival. As the fate of Mrs. Warren's Profession suggests, the initial success or notoriety of a Shaw play was no reliable indicator of its future vogue. Several plays that were huge successes at their first American presentation have since been largely neglected, while other works, often branded as minor, have enjoyed tremendous success later on, thanks on occasion to an unusual production or the appearance of a major star. An example of the former would be Fanny's First Play, which ran eight months in New York when it was premiered there in 1912 but which has never had a major revival outside of the Shaw Festival in Canada. By contrast such plays as The Apple Cart and The Millionairess, dismissed or totally ignored at first, enjoyed newsworthy and relatively successful mountings when produced with Maurice Evans (1956) and Katharine Hepburn (1952) respectively.