Man And Superman

Well, now I can put this misbegotten month of plays behind me. I am well and truly off schedule ... but I'll catch up very soon. Expect the first of our month of horror plays to get read in the next day or two. This past month has been a bit of resistance training - it'll all seem easier from here on out. Something about this era just makes the reading slow going. Both Shaw and Wilde do it to me.

It's not that I don't enjoy the plays - I do. I truly regret that my acting career will pass without having played John Tanner, a role I'd love to have sunk my teeth into at some point. But as a reader, it's difficult to make these plays engage. In many ways, Man And Superman is about as dramatic and theatrical as the Socratic Dialogues. These are philosophies given flesh, and set to expound against each other. There's little development of character or plot, there is purely development of thought and language.

I wonder how it all played in the era it was written, an era where speaking tours and lectures were hot tickets, and intelligent conversation was the sort of aspirational behavior that people would want to see modeled on stage. I imagine it played like a house afire, but I don't know how it translates now.

ANN [Looking at him with fond pride and caressing his arm] Never mind her, dear. Go on talking.
TANNER Talking!
[Universal laughter.]

CURTAIN