Man and Superman

The Theatre on the Green appears to be climbing a platonic ladder of laughs, and with the current production of Shaw's Man and Superman the company has reached a high rung which will prove difficult to top.

Monday evening's opening was marred by none of the foibles which often make the play long, tedious and choked with Shavian didacticism. The production moved quickly from the peaks of Shavian wit and left the sprawling valleys of Shaw's philosophizing to shift for themselves.

But it is not judicious cutting which alone makes the production successful. More it is the sparkling cast, the elaborate set, and the amusing special effects which makes Man and Superman summer stock that should not be missed.

Barry Morse as the iconoclastic John Tanner plays with deft versatility which succeeds in both the comic scenes and the more serious Don Juan in Hell interlude. Opposite Morse is Nancy Wickwire who sparkles as Tanner's impish, if unwanted, suitor. As the sentimental slush Octavius Robinson, Michael Higgins is handsome, winsome, and properly Victorian.

The supporting cast includes a number of actors who deserve commendation, notably Michael Lewis as the irascible Roebuck Ramsden and Sorrell Booke as the arch-brigand Mendoza (also the Devil in the Don Juan scene). Cavada Humphrey turned in an adequate performance as the misunderstood Violet Robinson, as did Robert Brustein and Thomas Hill as her husband and father-in-law respectively. I particularly enjoyed John Wynne-Evans as Straker, Tanner's Cockney chauffeur.

William D. Roberts has provided the play with highly effective colonnade settings which, with alternations, serve as a study, an English park, a Spanish moor, and a hacienda. The grass in front of the stage, moreover, makes a perfect roadway for the introduction of Tanner's early-model automobile.

Usually Man and Superman is produced without the Don Juan interlude because the rest of the play is long and the interlude is to some extent extraneous to the action. Director Jerome Kilty was wise, however, to include it, for not only does it make the play a whole, but it also includes some of the best of Shaw's didactic dialogue. For those who may prefer plot to opinions on the artist-man and the mother-woman, combined with discussion of the relative merits of Heaven and Hell, there is the consolation of some very excellent special effects. The Hell scene is opened with an eerie concert of Devil's helpers, and characters appear with great explosions and mushroom puffs of smoke. The lighting by Greg Harney contributes also to the success of the Hell scene as it does to the entire production.

Man and Superman is not, of course, mere comedy, and the play is susceptible to several levels of interpretation. On the surface, Shaw has built a comedy to explode the popular assumption that man pursues woman. Actually, it's the other way around, Shaw says, as any numbscull might detect. But the issue goes beyond the simple mechanics of who traps whom, sexually speaking.

The issue is complicated in the case of the artist-man who Tanner, or at least Don Juan, is. When such a person, possessing Shaw's enigmatic "Life Force," encounters the mother-woman, conflict is intensified because the artist is unwilling to submit to domesticity. A third twist is developed as the mother-woman also turns out to be an artist-mother-woman, which Anne Whitefield is. Thus the sexual trapping is extended to encompass broad questions of artistic self-realization in the face of domestic morality and social mores.

This basic conflict is also broadened into the whole debate in the Don Juan scene on the relative merits of Heaven and Hell. Again on the surface, Heaven is portrayed as incredibly dull while Hell is presented as the home of beauty and idealism.

But Shaw will not let one off with a simple dichotomy; clearly there is a paradox and Hell is not all it's cracked up to be. Don Juan, the hero, chooses to escape to Heaven, while the stupid, if pitiable, Ramsden prefers to prolong his visit to the pleasure pots of Hell. No review can do justice to an interpretation of the play, but suffice to say that Man and Superman has paradoxes, ambivalences, and deeper meanings which the actors present clearly and without strain.

Although it may sound unduly repetitive, I say again that Man and Superman should not go unseen by Summer School theatregoers. From what productions I have seen, it is the best that the summer circuit around Boston has produced so far.