Word: supermans
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...Superman (by George Bernard Shaw; produced by Maurice Evans) sets forth what is very likely Shaw's best-known theory but remains one of his least-seen plays. Longwindedness is its only very serious fault. After 42 years, Shaw's once explosive thesis (it is really woman who pursues man) may have all the soothing familiarity of a nursery rhyme; but after 42 years the play remains a wickedly witty comedy about the basis of marriage and the War Between the Sexes. And about anything else that happened to pop into Shaw's head...
...narrative of Bozo's travels, get a rudimentary idea of geography. Bozo's sales: 1,000,000. Most of the companies are dead serious about their job as molders of the young mind. When a Columbia Records survey showed that the story children most wanted recorded was Superman, Columbia sternly refused, because it was "not interested in that sort of thing...
Such successful plays as "Allegro" and "man and Superman" were sold out almost as soon as the box office windows opened. Abrams said, although his agency did manage to fill some orders for those shows...
...press out the depth, cut it to a sensible length, then polish so it glistens, and you have the current product at the Shubert. The process transforms a dramatic treatise in philosophy into a funny but two-dimensional play, perhaps the best that can be done with. "Man and Superman," which is, after all, something to be read rather than seen. Shaw's rebellious witticisms are served up in the elegant, stylized manner that Gielgud brought to perfection in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and if the audience is delighted, it may also be disappointed in getting this and nothing...
Nevertheless, this constant attempt to smooth away a rough, wholesome play cannot be completely successful. Where the treatment of "Earnest" was natural and right, in "Man and Superman" it is artificial, and when the power of Shaw's ideas does break through, both the cast and the audience are left both embarrassed and helpless. But after a painful farewell to George Bernard Shaw, one can trot down to the Shubert and be amused...