Shaw Shorts at the Orange Tree

The great subject of the nineteenth century novel – it has been said – is adultery. It did not stop being a great subject in 1900, however; and perhaps it needed the impish George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) to make comedy by addressing the capacity of marriage to include, even embrace, adultery. The Orange Tree Theatre’s double bill of Shaw Shorts combines his How He Lied To Her Husband (1904) and Overruled (1912). In the first, Henry Apjohn (Joe Bolland), the lover of Aurora Bompas (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), tries at first to devise ways of covering up his affair with her; but not only does this involve too many lies for comfort, he also finds that Teddy Bompas (Jordan Mifsúd), her husband, is simply delighted to find his wife inspires such admiration. The first couple we see in Overruled, Gregory Lunn (Alex Bhat) and Mrs Juno (Hara Yannas), declare love for each other while each takes outrageous lengths of time to admit being married to someone else. Before long, however, they yield the stage to their spouses (Myer-Bennett as Mrs Lunn, Mifsúd as Mr Juno); and the play ends with a sustained quartet, all negotiating their different views of infidelity.

Shaw was the most important British playwright between Sheridan and Pinter. Very few of his plays now enjoy the status of classics – Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923) are the most secure - but he was so prolific and so long-lived that there’ll always be a supply of Shaw plays that remain to be seen for the first time. The Orange Tree, Richmond, has long been a friend to his work; I remember, for example, a 1995 production of The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1934) there that caught all the considerable charm that’s part of the Shaw style.

Another Shaw characteristic is loquacity. Where Pinter is sparing with words, Shaw is profligate, so that for modern audiences many of his plays run the risk of excess. In 2015, the National Theatre revived Shaw’s Man and Superman (1905), whose protagonist, John Tanner, may be the talkiest of all Shavian characters: it was just the challenge needed by that intelligent, resourceful, but sometimes too artful actor Ralph Fiennes, who made the verbal torrents become part of the life force itself. How He Lied and Overruled are both miniatures, but all their characters spout words, words, words. 

Shaw brings it off because his characters have his own energy and fun. Aurora Bompas’s names are funny in themselves. The comedy of How He Lied begins with her having lost all the poems Henry has written to her, naming her in them. Worried that her sister-in-law and husband will find the sheaf of poems to Aurora, she wails “I believe I’m the only Aurora in the world.”

And Shaw characters are clever. In Overruled, one man, pursuing the other man’s wife, tells the husband “I’m the anticipation – you’re the disappointment.” The notion of a woman’s having a plurality of husbands is blithely spoken of as “polyandering”, almost as if it were an aspect of being Pollyannaish. 

At the Orange Tree, the audience sit on four sides of the actors (there’s a gallery, too). The intimacy means that the actors – directed by Paul Miller - can deliver all their words with considerable naturalness. Simon Daw has designed the plays in something like modern dress, with just enough dashes of flamboyance to match the way these people speak. Jordan Mifsúd (playing Teddy Tompas in the first play, Sibthorpe Juno in the latter, but nicely differentiating between them) speaks with particular panache, but he’s beautifully matched in each play: Joe Bolland’s Henry (How He Lied) has lovely displays of both vulnerability and indignation, while Alex Bhat’s Gregory behaves with dashes of Romantic fantasy and narcissism. The two women, Myer-Bennett and Yannas, are a fraction less stylish, but both plays proceed with a wide range of dynamics within an overall brisk tempo. 

In consequence, we start to feel how seductive talk itself can be. None of these characters talk themselves very seriously, but they have such spirit and swagger that they’re riveting. They are, after all, addressing a central dilemma of civilization: how should married couples handle the adulterous attractions that are inevitable within society?

Miller - the Orange Tree’s artistic director since 2014 and only the second person to hold that post - has been making lesser-known Shaw a serial feature of his theatre’s repertory throughout his régime: Widowers’ Houses (2014) in 2014, The Philanderer (2016) in 2016, Misalliance (2018) in 2017, and Candida (1897) in 2019. Shaw Shorts thus proves perfect local fare. In How He Lied, Henry and Aurora even talk about Candida – amusingly, they pay it no compliments – whereupon the Orange Tree audience responds with a degree of appreciative audience laughter that would be heard today in few other theatres.

This Shaw theme is part of Miller’s larger cultivation of British plays: D.H.Lawrence and Terence Rattigan are among the other playwrights whose work he has directed here. This November-January brings a revival of his 2019 production of Rattigan’s little-known While the Sun Shines (1943). I enjoyed Rattigan’s play itself less than did many then, but, as with these Shaw Shorts, I was delighted to make the acquaintance of such a rarity in live performance. Other forthcoming plays are by the living playwrights Bryony Lavery (After Easter, July 3-August 7), Athol Fugard (Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, August 28-October 2), and Michele Lee (Rice, October 9-November 13): a judicious blend of period and present.

Dorothea Myer-Bennett (Aurora Bompas) and Joe Bolland (Henry Apjohn) in George Bernard Shaw’s “How He Lied to Her Husband” @The Other Richard

Alex Bhat (Gregory Lunn) and Hara Yannas (Mrs Juno) in George Bernard Shaw’s “Overruled” @The Other Richard

Alex Bhat (Gregory Lunn) and Hara Yannas (Mrs Juno) in George Bernard Shaw’s “Overruled”. @The Other Richard