Shaw's Women

George Bernard Shaw was afraid of women, director Robert Gillespie reminds us in his programme notes to this, his revival of two short works by the playwright. And who could blame him, when the women of Shaw’s imagination were – at least as evidenced by these plays – such flighty, devious, exasperating creatures?

These two one-act dramas – ‘Village Wooing’, from 1933, and the 1905 comedy ‘How He Lied To Her Husband’ – both rest on Shaw’s fears, not only of women, but of love, marriage, and the havoc sexual relationships can work on both genders. In ‘Village Wooing’, a country shop-girl encounters a taciturn bachelor on a cruise ship, and succeeds in converting him, against his will, into a shopkeeper and potential suitor. In ‘How He Lied To Her Husband’, a young man’s illicit love for a married woman provokes an unexpected reaction in her husband.

The plays function as interesting companion pieces to Shaw’s better known works: ‘Village Wooing’ is rather like ‘Pygmalion’ in reverse; and ‘How He Lied To Her Husband’ contains an amusing reference to his own ‘Candida’. But both the male and female characters are little more than pencil sketches, and we are never fully able to engage with any of them. Shaw’s most interesting women are, ultimately, to be found elsewhere.

Still, there are some good performances, especially from the nicely deadpan Mark Fleischmann in ‘Village Wooing’, some funny one-liners, and several airings of the word ‘flapdoodle’: it’s one that I had never before encountered, and it surely deserves immediate reinstatement into contemporary conversation.