THEATER CHRONIC LE
A PLAUSIBLE IRISHMAN
Shaw's case as a writer seemed to be so definitely closed,
and the critics to have nailed him down so tightly and rightly to his
proper place (whatever it may be), that people of my generation never
thought the matter would have to be re-opened. Yet we are just now
in the midst of a Shaw boom-four of his plays are currently being
presented, either on or off Broadway, and the musical
My
Fair Lady,
the most sensational smash of recent years, draws its book from a fifth
play,
Pygmalion-so
we have to recognize that the old man has some
kind of vitality that outlives all those other qualities of his plays which
are so definitely dated. Of course, the mere fact of revival is no in–
controvertible proof of value, since the entertainment industry seems
to be flourishing just now: there are a great many actors around, most
of them quite competent, small theaters are able to find space and
backers (in the theater, at least, there seems to be considerable money
available for non-commercial en terprises), and audiences for live theater
are more numerous than at any time in recent years; the problem for
producers is only how to lay hands on some decent material. So far
Shaw seems to be the best that they have been able to come up with,
and this fact is a considerable revelation of the present state of our
theater and the level of its audiences.
Early in the fall it was rumored that this was to be a good-perhaps
even "great"-season for New York theater: the off-Broadway move–
ment of recent years has consolidated itself and virtually created a new
theater-going public, and this influence has in turn flowed back upon the
Broadway stage. The season has, in one sense, lived up to these rumors:
at the present time one can see in New York productions of Shakespeare
(the Old Vic imported from England), Shaw, O'Neill (who is also hav–
ing something of a revival), Moliere (in a new translation by Richard
Wilbur), and a good many other things of purely diverting or spectacu–
lar nature. The only trouble is that this "vitality" of the theater rather
resembles that of a dank tropical undergrowth-a chaos without the
glimmer of anything resembling a leading idea or a direction. There are
no new playwrights ; the experimental plays put on in some of the little
