Four of the characters are here described as mad and there is a wildness to the play that comes out beautifully in this production. Far from being the desiccated brainbox people assume, he writes about the extremes of passion. When Claire Lams’s spritely, mischievous Candida mockingly asks them “pray, my lords and masters, what have you to offer for my choice?” we could be watching a comedic version of Ibsen.īut Miller has also grasped that there is something Dionysiac within Shaw. For a start, we see the eponymous heroine exposing the word-drunk absurdity of the two men competing for her love: her Christian socialist husband, Rev Morell, and the hyperbolic teenage poet, Marchbanks. That liberation takes many forms in this remarkable play, first performed in 1895. This is his fourth production of one of the plays in five years and it induces in the audience a giddy delight that reminds me of the comment by Jorge Luis Borges that the work of Shaw “leaves one with a flavour of liberation”. P aul Miller is almost single-handedly keeping the Shavian flame alive.
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