Shaw Shorts (Double Bill) London Reviews and Tickets

This show has not been reviewed yet

Positive

Mixed

Negative

Members say

Be the first to review

About the Show

A double bill of Bernard Shaw's short comedies.

Paul Miller ("Candida", "Widowers’ Houses") directs two striking comedies from the celebrated Irish playwright Bernard Shaw ("Pygmalian", "Saint Joan"). "How He Lied to Her Husband" sees a tormented wife hunting for missing love poems written by Henry, her "admirer". When her husband arrives home, the truth will surely out... or will it? "Overruled" follows a complex turn of events which sees two married couples fall in love across the lines of those marriages. One clear question arises: what next?

Critic Reviews (4)

Both stories grab with their modernity as they riff on sexual mores and game-playing. Both, even at only about half an hour each, outstay their welcome as their provocative ideas start to overwhelm the plausibility.
Read more

If ultimately Shaw Shorts feels like a pair of attractive curtain raisers in search of a more substantial main attraction, rather than a really satisfying evening of theatre in its own right, there is still much here to enjoy.
Read more

As a writer of social comedy, Shaw doesn’t have the effervescence of Oscar Wilde, and small doses of his brand of artifice go a long way. The jokes and scenarios are more gently amusing than side-splitting...
Read more

Shaw’s one-act pieces How He Lied to Her Husband (1904), a farce about adultery in literary circles, and Overruled (1912), a comedy of polygamy, are here delightfully revived by Shavian specialist director Paul Miller.
Read more

Trailer

Creative team