by Bernard Shaw
seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 24 June 2020
Two short plays by Bernard Shaw, How He Lied to Her Husband (written in 1904 as a curtain raiser to Man of Destiny) and Overruled (written in 1912 for an evening of short pieces by various playwrights) herald the welcome return of live theatre with a small audience to this wonderful theatre in Richmond.
Paul Miller, the artistic director of the Orange Tree, has form in reviving the classics of British drama, not least several scintillating productions of plays by Shaw. Here, two pieces rarely performed because they are so short - and because the idea of a 'curtain raiser' would probably be incomprehensible to a modern audience and unthinkable financially - are given the chance to remind us of Shaw's brilliant use of an absurd situation to expose the hypocrisies of social convention.
In How He Lied to Her Husband Henry Apjohn (Joe Bolland) has written sonnets in praise of Aurora Bompas (Dorothea Myer-Bennett). She has mislaid them, sure that her sister-in-law has purloined them and will show her husband Teddy (Jordan Mifsúd). In just a few turns of dialogue the dreamy romanticism that allows Henry to idolise Aurora is skewered by the curious mixture of carelessness and worldly wisdom exhibited by Aurora. The moment when social reality really begins to collide with high-flown sentiment is wonderfully managed by the shift of the lovers from using their christian names to using their formal titles ('Mr Apjohn', 'Mrs Bompas'), a social nicety with almost no practical force nowadays, but one which Shaw's unerring instinct for dramatic shorthand can still bring into play for an attentive audience.
Masculine pretensions are further skewered by the arrival of Teddy Bompas. Has he seen the poems? Will he be outraged? Who will prevail in a fistfight? He is more angry when Apjohn attempts to deny that the sonnets were written to his wife than when he finally confesses that they have been - though the anger may be entirely confected. The suggestion that his wife is not worth writing love poems to is far more wounding than the threat of a love affair disrupting his marriage. It is brillint anarchic stuff, perfectly suited to a thirty minute exposition.
In Overruled Gregory Lunn (Alex Bhat) and Mrs Juno (Hara Yannas) have been conducting a shipboard romance - but Lunn is appalled to discover that he has mistaken Mrs Juno for a widow. With a ridiculous yelp he squawks that he has broken a sacred promise to his mother never to flirt with a married woman. Voices which each recognises as their respective spouses cause a flurry of alarm, but it transpires that Sibthorpe Juno (Jordan Mifsúd) and Mrs Lunn (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) have also been romancing on a cruise liner travelling in the opposite direction around the world. When the two couples meet, the ladies almost immediately form an urbane alliance (one thinks of Gwendolen and Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest) while the men desperately try to catch up with the unconventional possibilities of the situation. Shaw subtly indicates his own sympathies by allowing the wives to use the christian names of their husbands (one of them quite ridiculous) but withholding those of the women, thus buttressing them with a subtle authority. Once again, further development is superfluous.
It is so refreshing to see the conventions of 'mere' social comedy used so adroitly to raise issues as serious as the double standards between male and female propriety, the tiresomeness of male presumptions of superiority, and the innate common sense in women's negotiation of the social niceties. Even in a stripped down acting space, with half the seats removed from around the stage and an audience necessarily distanced from one another and facemasked, Shaw's provocative and whimsical humour, wonderfully embodied in this fine cast, still produces a welcome tonic and a challenge to the way we think and behave.
On the cultural front, Shaw and the Orange Tree 2 : pandemic 0
