Word: shavianism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Jack the Ripper as an 'independent genius' who by 'private enterprise' had succeeded where socialism failed in getting the press to take some sympathetic interest in the conditions of London's East End." Recalling Shaw's epistolary romance with actress Ellen Terry, he quotes a vintage bit of Shavian grumping: "Let those who may complain that it was all on paper remember that only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love." Describing the tergiversations that led up to the marriage, Holroyd trenchantly observes, "Politically, Shaw had put his faith in the power...
Gurney equates staging the unachievable perfect party with creating theater itself--assembling arbitrarily chosen people in an arbitrarily chosen place to act out an externally imposed story. The play closes in a Shavian debate about a larger theme that resonates through all of Gurney's work: America, he says, has lost its sense of absolutes and faces the painful task of living with ambiguity. Striving for perfection in any endeavor signals an inability to cope with an unsettled world. This pastiche, conveying more than a casual cocktail notion, could easily be pretentious. Gurney makes...
...British stage veterans have done as much to promote the works of the white-bearded comedic master as Rex Harrison. He starred in the 1941 film version of Major Barbara, then played Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, the musical adaptation of Pygmalion. Now Harrison is again setting the Shavian standard, this time with Diana Rigg, 44, and a thoroughly splendid cast in a production of Heartbreak House, which opened triumphantly at the Haymarket Theater in London's West End last week. For his role as the 88-year-old Captain Shotover, Harrison, only 75, managed to age himself...
...British guns than for God's grace? As for Livingstone, is not a single believer a joy to heaven? Or is he trying to amass a head count of natives for personal glory? Pownall raises these questions without really answering them. But he raises them with a Shavian exuberance...
...conception My Dinner with André is interesting in a kind of off-off Broadway way. One can imagine trendy New York twittering about it for weeks - well, any way, days. And if the protagonists were, by nature, men of Shavian wit and intellectual range it might have worked. But they are merely fake profound, in the show biz manner. Their pose may be antitheatrical, but the pair are, in fact, theatrical in the very worst, or drama student, sense of the term...