OVERRULED
Which is only to say that Shaw was too great a playwright to let ideas get in the way of persuasive characters. As often as not–though this flies in the face of the popular conception of a cold-blooded, system-mongering Shaw–it’s the characters who lead the ideas along in his plays.
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A Touchstone Theatre dark-night production, Sandra Grand’s staging reinforces the script by adding as an introduction excerpts from Shaw’s preface to the play. Here he describes it as a “clinical study of polygamy” and labels adultery a “melodramatic bore” that must be tricked out with farcical diversions if it’s going to carry any dramatic weight. A typical case of Shavian special pleading and overexplanation, the preface nonetheless plays as interestingly as the mannered play itself–and revealingly sounds little different from the arch, pointed dialogue.
