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FOLLOW Erin's Flag To Subscribe To Receive WGT's FREE E-Mail Newsletter 5/7/12 96 Years Ago, Proud Shaw Calls '16 Rising 'Fair Fight' Shaw's 'Man and Superman' Suggests Some Still Want To Cage Women Megan Finnegan Bungeroth finds that Irish Rep's new production of the George Bernard Shaw comedic classic reflects society's continued unease with women who want to make their own choices Irish Repertory Theatre (l-r): Will Bradley (Octavius), Jonathan Hammond (Mendoza/The Devil), Max Gordon Moore (Jack/Don Juan), Brian Murray (Ramsden/The Statue) and Paul O'Brien (Malone). Photo by James Higgins. New York – George Bernard Shaw is one of the most important Irish playwrights in the last several centuries. So there are numerous reasons for producing any of Shaw's plays at any time, anywhere, are many -- they're smart, endlessly relevant, sharply funny, and most don't cost anything in royalties. The Irish Repertory Theatre and the Gingold Theatrical Group staged "Man and Superman" as part of the "Shaw New York" festival, coinciding as well with Ireland's "G.B. Shaw: Back in Town" conference at University College Dublin, running from May 29 to June 1st. Shaw, a Dublin native, lived from 1856 to 1950. He wrote prolifically and was a staunch defender of Irish nationalism, while introducing what were at the time radical ideas about socialism, equality and morality. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925 and an Academy Award in 1938 for his adapted screenplay of his play "Pygmalion" (later made even more famous when it was turned into the hugely popular musical "My Fair Lady.") Paying tribute to one of Ireland's greatest writers is certainly reason enough for the Irish Rep to stage "Man and Superman," even though it's set in England and has only two Irish characters. But the reason that resonated loudest with this reviewer was the wonder that a play written in 1903 can so accurately represent the views of (some) Americans today about the dangers of letting women make their own choices. Irish Repertory Theatre Max Gordon Moore. Photo by James Higgins. The play operates, on one level, under a simple premise -- a man, Jack Tanner (played by Max Gordon Moore with a perfect combination of assuredness and ingenuousness), runs all around Europe, even to Hell and back, to escape a woman, Ann Whitefield (played with cunning and exquisite range by Janie Brookshire), who will stop at nothing to have him in her clutches. But it's also a play about socialism, of which Shaw was a big proponent, and the tenuous concepts of free will and independence both for men and women. With the death of Ann's father, Jack becomes Ann's guardian and spends the rest of the time trying to convince everyone, himself included, that she is a "boa constrictor who will destroy any man she sets upon, especially the innocently infatuated Octavius (Will Bradley). Jack insists that any man Ann chooses loses all choice in the matter, not knowing at first that he is the true object d'amour. He also laments her target's lack of say in the matter without a trace of irony, which is laughable considering that Ann is forced to submit her life entirely to the will of her dead father and the two male guardians her father anointed. As with any comedy centered on a bantering, bickering pair of attractive young people, we don't doubt that Jack and Ann will come together in the end, but Shaw makes delicious work of forcing us to guess how much either will have to sacrifice in order to make that happen. Irish Repertory Theatre Janie Brookshire (Ann/Ana). Photo by James Higgins. Along the way, however, we are confronted with a social structure that would be laughably out of date if it weren't so eerily similar to our current state of affairs, here in America as well as in Ireland, where woman's rights are even more hard fought than here. Ann is not allowed to make her own choices, of course, so she must resort to lying and laying a complex groundwork to snag her man. The male characters rail against this kind of trapping, but the play is aware of how unfair that is -- Ann's only other choice is to submit to Octavius, which seems as likely as a boa constrictor submitting to a baby deer. Ann becomes the woman who can't be trusted to know what's best for herself, and is automatically villainized when she attempts to get around that label by making her own decisions. 96 Years Ago, Proud Shaw Calls '16 Rising 'Fair Fight' George Bernard Shaw was certainly no shrinking violet when addressing issues of his time, and he was never more outspoken than on Ireland, the land of his birth. In this excerpt from Shaw's May 10, 1916, letter in The [London] Daily News, the Dublin native, like many around the world, expressed disgust at the executions of the leaders of the Easter Rising. By the killings, then underway in Dublin, the English, in this Shavian view, were "canonizing their prisoners." He added, "I remain an Irishman and am bound to contradict any implication that I can regard as a traitor any Irishman taken in a fight for Irish independence against the British Government. The fuller extract follows. Read more about the Easter Rising on The Wild Geese. My own view is that the men who were shot in cold blood after their capture or surrender were prisoners of war and that it was, therefore, entirely incorrect to slaughter them. The relation of Ireland to Dublin Castle is in this respect precisely that of the Balkan States to Turkey or Belgium or the City of Lille to the Kaiser and of the United States to Great Britain. Until Dublin Castle is superseded by a national parliament and Ireland is voluntarily incorporated with the British Empire as Canada, Australia, and South Africa have been incorporated, an Irishman resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his country is doing only what Englishmen will do if it be their misfortune to be invaded and conquered by the Germans in the course of the present war. Further, such an Irishman is as much in order morally in accepting assistance from Germans in his struggle with England as England is in accepting the assistance of Russia in her struggle with Germany. The fact that he knows that his enemies will not respect his rights if they catch him and that he must therefore fight with a rope round his neck increase his risk, but adds in the same measure to his glory in the eyes of his compatriots and of disinterested admirers of patriotism throughout the world. It is absolutely impossible to slaughter a man in this position without making him a martyr and a hero, even though the day before the rising he may have been only a minor poet. The shot Irishmen will now take their places beside Emmet and the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland and beside the heroes of Poland, Serbia and Belgium in Europe, and nothing in heaven or on earth can prevent it. The military authorities and the English Government must have known they were canonizing their prisoners. Perhaps I had better add that I am not a Sinn Feiner, and that since those utterances of mine which provoked American Gaels to mob plays some years ago to the very eve of the present rising I used all my influence and literary power to discredit the Sinn Fein ideal and in particular to insist on the duty of Ireland to throw herself with all her force on the side of the French Republic against the Hoehenzollern and Hapsburg monarchies. But I remain an Irishman and am bound to contradict any implication that I can regard as a traitor any Irishman taken in a fight for Irish independence against the British Government, which was a fair fight in everything except the enormous odds my countrymen had to face. WG Violet, Octavius' sister, is equally conniving, when she wheedles funds from her father-in-law, another paternal autocrat, but is first introduced by way of a supposed scandal. When the assembled group believes that Violet has found herself unmarried and pregnant, the older, exceedingly proper Ramsden (the excellent Brian Murray) and her own brother find it a fate worse than death, and her impregnator to be "worse than a murderer." It is only the anarchist Jack who defends her and insists that she should be praised and supported instead of being forced to marry the anonymous scoundrel that everyone agrees is a horrible beast. It turns out, of course, that audacious Ann will see herself safely married off, and that Violet is no harlot after all, so we can all breathe a corseted sigh of relief. We laugh at these conventions — the unmarried pregnant woman is later met with more consternation than a band of roving thieves; the young woman can't possibly know her own mind so it must be safeguarded by the older men around her. But when we leave the theater, we still confront those conventions in their less potent but still powerful 21st century forms. The classic comedy hasn't been performed in the New York in 25 years, and David Staller's adaptation and direction shows us what we've been missing all this time. Staller, who is the first person to have directed all 65 of Shaw's plays, is considered an expert, and his understanding of the work shows in the production, and especially in the casting. He has tweaked the script, tightened it, and extracted some of the best idioms spouted by the characters to incorporate into opening tableaus. The characters directly address the audience with such statements as "Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get," and "Lack of money is the root of all evil," before introducing the scene about to take place. Staller's setup works — it gives the otherwise naturalistic play a sheen of self-awareness and lets the audience in on the absurdity of this Victorian world of manipulated rules. It also introduces all of the characters from the start, even those we don't meet until later acts. This convention quickly lets us know that, for these people sitting safely in their drawing room in Act I, there is much hidden as well as much to come — let's not forget that they will all go to Hell before the night is through. (Don't worry, they come back.) The staging of the "Don Juan in Hell" scene in Act II, which can stand alone and is often cut from "Man and Superman" productions, is reason enough to see this play. Also, the Occupy Wall Street-esque, "steal from the rich to give to the poor" musings of the brigande leader Mendoza (Jonathan Hammond) and the spats between the American son, Hector (Zachary Spicer) and his Irish father, Malone (Paul O'Brien), bring welcome additional dimensions to the plot. Everyone in the cast is superb, and the play is visually enchanting, even when the content is deliciously disconcerting. WG Performances of "Man and Superman" run through June 17 at The Irish Repertory Theatre (132 West 22nd Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues): Wednesdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Thursdays at 7 p.m.; Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $55 and $65, and are available by calling 212-727-2737 or online at www.irishrep.org.

This feature was edited by Gerry Regan and produced by Joe Gannon.

Copyright © 2012 by Megan Finnegan Bungeroth and GAR Media LLC. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed without prior permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@garmedia.com.

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