AFTER a year or more of gazing at screens, it is a joy to be back inside a theatre. For a start, there is the social pleasure of seeing old friends. Then theatre, like church, allows us all to engage in an act of communal celebration. Above all, after the prosaic realism of television drama (with the honourable exception of Inside No 9), it is a pleasure to once more encounter verbal richness and intellectual vivacity.
My first visit to a theatre since December was to the Orange Tree in Richmond to see a double-bill of Shaw Shorts (until June 26). Socially distanced as we were, it was a thrill to be reminded of Shaw’s irrepressible gaiety, gift for paradox and surprising sexiness. The first play, How He Lied To Her Husband (1904), is a jeu d’esprit in which an uxorious husband relishes the fact that his wife is the recipient of amorous verses penned by a young poet. The joke is that the characters have all been to see Candida—the last Shaw play to be staged at the Orange Tree before lockdown— and are, in effect, re-enacting its triangular passions.
Overruled (1912) is the more substantial and subversive, and uncannily anticipates Coward’s Private Lives by 20 years. A young solicitor has been making love to an attractive woman during a world cruise. Both discover that their marital partners have been doing the same while also traversing the globe. What keeps this sexual quadrille airborne is the deftness with which Shaw handles a delicate situation.
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