Word: shavianly
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...performances themselves are excellent almost down the line. Nancy Wickwire gives us a radiant Helena; and if she does not show quite the blazing drive desired, she does still bring a good deal of the proper Shavian sheen to the part. John Ragin, moving from a series of small parts to take over the important and impossible role of the scornful cad Bertram on very short notice, showed no visible signs today of trouble, and will doubtless continue to make a favorable impression...
...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...
...than the attitudes that underlie them. In Tynan's case, private conversation reinforces the impression given by his articles in the New Yorker, where he is guest critic, that his basic attitude toward the theatre is a deeply serious one. In a profession populated largely by somnambulistic hacks, his Shavian emphasis on the relation of drama to life is rare and valuable. But his seriousness never declines into solemnity; his awareness of the social significance of the stage is leavened by wit (he is a punster as well as a pundit), and by an understanding that dramatic criticism...
...British Robert Wagner, turns in a remarkably subtle and mature performance as the heroic villain. As for the heroine, any competent judge of film flesh might confidently have ranked Leslie (Gigi) Caron a little lower than Jayne Mansfield on any list of Girls Least Likely to Succeed as a Shavian Heroine. But as Mrs. Dubedat, an intellectual's woman in whom Shaw himself saw little more than charm, Actress Caron suggests that her personal and momentary charm is really the mysterious recollection of le charme eternel...
...Professor Greg was an old hand at departmental politics, but he was also a great scholar. About to die, Greg decided to play a splendid little joke on the "academic community." The story, which carries a subtle overtone of Shavian irony, took place at a fictional university, but the characters are familiar: the smooth and politic department chairman, the impressive "Great Ideas" lecturer with little scholarship in his background, the pale, imitative young instructor. Perhaps the tale is not entirely uninteresting to officers and students of Harvard University...