Word: shavianly
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Edward Finnegan, and elderly gentleman who naturally portrays the elderly Major Petkoff, seems the only character capable of conjuring up any comedy. The others, in their assorted attempts to build emotional rhapsodies, burlesque the Shavian wit rather than convey it. Settings, neatly done by Matt Horner, demonstrate his expertness and the effects achievable by an outfit operating on a shoe-string basis...
...available in a single volume (omitted: Immaturity and Love among the Artists). As novels they are pretty poor; Shaw himself observed that they were "just readable enough to be intolerable." But the three taken together are Victorian documents, and give a good idea of the audacious, irreverent young Shavian mind...
...Unsocial Socialist (1883) is the most Shavian of the three reprinted novels. " 'Of course, she has proposed to you, and you have refused,' " says a scornful maiden to Sidney Trefusis, the hero. " 'On the contrary,' " he says. " 'I proposed, and she accepted. That is why I have to hide.' " Trefusis is a wealthy Socialist who disguises himself as a workman, lives in a gaudy ancestral mansion full of trapezes, plaster statues and carpenter's tools. He serves as a mouthpiece for Author Shaw, then a poverty-stricken young Socialist who wandered around London...
...concessions have been made to the bobby sox brigade. Johnson gets too cute at times, much to the brigade's delight, and the slapstick isn't always up to Shavian standards. But you don't have to be a bobby-soxer to enjoy Johnson's plight on his first duck-hunting trip, and constant adult laughter at the many good gags drowned out the most ambitious concerted squeals the soxers could muster last night...
...seems as if the action and dialogue might move towards some unity, and then the cameral swings back to the spectacle of a thousand exotic extras milling in the shadow of a fabulous temple. The development of Caesar, the materialist with an idealistic end, comes in snatches of crisp Shavian dialogue, but the entire effect is uneven and erratic. As the Roman conqueror, Claude Rains is excellent. He plays his part with intelligence and a calmness unmoved by the grandeur about him. Vivian Leigh is an effective contrast as Cleopatra, the girlish queen. Flora Robson, as Ftatateeta, a weird combination...