Word: playing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...this, of course, takes us far from the lecherous nobleman of Mozart and da Ponte, with his thousand and three mistresses. (One suspects that the Don Juan story figures in the play less as its actual inspiration than as a unifying device, a splendid resource for theatrical and intellectual trickery, and a handy handle to pick the whole thing up by.) It was not the sexual aspect of Don Juan that interested Shaw primarily. (Indeed, it was not the sexual aspect of anything, even of sex, that interested Shaw primarily, in spite of occasional protestations to the contrary.) "Philosophically," says...
...word, according to Shaw, Don Juan is a proto-revolutionary, and so his Shavian descendant John Tanner is portrayed as a social agitator and the author of The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, which Shaw thoughtfully appends to the published edition of the play. In his own person, Tanner enunciates Shavian doctrine on such sublunary matters as sex, social convention, and moral passion. As Don Juan in the hell scene he discourses with equal brilliance on the Life Force, the nature of Nature, and the whole duty of man, arguing against the Devil's hedonistic creed of "love...
Awake and dreaming, Tanner-Don Juan is one of the greatest comic roles in the modern theatre. Its difficulty is compounded by the fact that though Tanner is the hero of the play and Don Juan its most eloquent spokesman, both of them, Tanner especially, serve also as satiric butts. Tanner may preach the Life Force, but the pursuing woman embodies the Life Force, which sweeps the protesting Tanner into her arms "as a sailor throws a scrap of fish into the mouth of a seabird...
...considerable skill on a graceless set by William D. Roberts. The hell scene in the Kilty production drags a bit, as it never does in the considerably-longer recorded version; probably it simply needs greater virtuosity than this cast could bring to it. Mr. Kilty does not take the play as seriously as he might, and the result is a rather superficial performance. But it is done with flamboyance and zest, and if the result is far from definitive, it is still delightful...
Since the script calls for only four actors (and uses only three of them most of the time), it is essential that each player be an accomplished "light comedian" if the frailty of the play's skeleton is not to show. An airy touch, good timing, and graceful movement are primary prerequisites...