Showing results by author "Bernard Shaw" in All Categories

"The Perfect Wagnerite" is a philosophical commentary on Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen". According to Shaw: "I write this pamphlet for the assistance of those who wish to be introduced to the work on equal terms with that inner circle of adepts... The reason is that its dramatic moments lie quite outside the consciousness of people whose joys and sorrows are all domestic and personal, and whose religions and political ideas are purely conventional and superstitious."

This unique book brings together George Bernard Shaw's witty and iconoclastic take on Wagner's masterwork, The Ring of the Nibelungen, with the composer's own essay on the role of art in revolution.

Bernard Shaw based his "religious pantomime" Androcles and the Lion on the ancient fable of the runaway slave who pulls a painful thorn from a lion's paw, thereby making a lifelong friend. This tale of a puny Greek tailor triumphing over the Roman emperor is, as always with Shaw, a commentary on the politics of his time, with the emperor standing in for the British government and, indeed, all repressive regimes.

The Emporor of Rome and the Queen of the Nile as only Shaw could have imagined them! He is a self-doubting cynic who is experiencing a mid-life crisis and she is an imperious and impertinent child on the threshold of womanhood. This recording also includes Shaw's alternate Prologue and his post-text notes.

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version.

Hace décadas que se publican libros que le dicen al hombre corriente cómo hacerse rico pero nadie se ha molestado en escribir uno para la minoría más ignorada por esta industria: los millonarios. En este ensayo humorístico escrito exclusivamente para superricos, se abordan temas de crucial interés tales como el éxito de la descendencia, las mejores formas de desperdiciar el dinero arduamente obtenido, las opciones de caridad más eficientes y cómo conciliar el estilo de vida millonario con el socialismo.

Fresh off his victory at The Battle of Lodi, Napoleon is planning to enjoy his lunch when a lieutenant arrives with the bad news that the dispatches he had been carrying were stolen. Infuriated, Napoleon threatens him with being court-martialed unless he can recover them. A woman appears who claims to know about the theft. Unconvinced of her story, Napoleon and the woman enter into a battle of wits in true Shaw style. Will the conqueror of worlds end up conquered by a woman?

You Never Can Tell was originally born out of a bet that Shaw couldn't write a "seaside comedy" (a popular theatrical genre at that time). The result is perhaps the most surprising of Shaw's plays, complete with marital mayhem, tangled romance, and even doubtful dentistry. Despite the play's lighthearted tone, it's really another of Shaw's brilliantly observed social treatises, this time in the guise of a light comedy.

The blowhards, the know-it-alls, the scrupulous and the impecunious are all targets for Shaw's incisive wit in his classic satire of the medical profession. A well-respected physician is forced to choose whom he shall save: a bumbling friend or the ne'er-do-well husband of the woman he loves.

Taking place on a single day in May 1909, a self-made millionaire and his family invite their future nobleman-in-law for a visit to their estate in Surrey, England. In this delightfully clever play, issues of gender, class, politics, and family are all targets for Shaw's keen wit.

"Don Juan in Hell" (1903) is Act 3, Scene 2 in "Man and Superman", a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw. The long third act of the play, which shows Don Juan himself having a conversation with several characters in Hell, is often cut. It consists of a philosophical debate between Don Juan and the Devil, with Doña Ana (Ann) and the Statue of Don Gonzalo, Ana's father looking on. This third act is often performed separately as a play in its own right.

Simon Cadell stars as Henry Higgins with Imelda Staunton as Eliza Doolittle in this BBC Radio 4 production of Shaw’s famous play. When phonetics tutor and linguist Henry Higgins meets Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, he makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can teach her to speak so well that she will be able to pass herself off as a Duchess at a society ball.

It's amazing how relevant these century-old words of Bernard Shaw's are right now. Just like then nobody understands the concept of socialism, and the fact that any successful democracy is a socialist democracy to some extent.

George Bernard Shaw's warm and witty play continues to challenge conventional wisdom about male/female relationships. Candida concerns a beautiful married woman's choice between the two men who love her.

George Bernard Shaw embraced the concept of what he called creative evolution. In 1982, after having witnessed the horrors of the First World War, Shaw started work on Back to Methuselah, a large-scale presentation of the story of human development, starting from the Garden of Eden and extended far into the future. The first performance was held in New York in 1922. The five plays included are "In the Beginning", "The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabus", "The Thing Happens", "Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman", and "As Far As Thought Can Reach".

Richard Dudgeon, who has become an outcast from his puritanical family due to his religious apostasy, returns home on the death of his father. Much to everyone’s surprise, it is revealed that the father changed his will shortly before his death and has left the bulk of the estate to Richard. Now that he is lord of the manor, Richard asserts himself and declares his opposition to the colonial British authorities. Later, he is arrested by the British and sentenced to death but is rescued in the nick of time by a local militia commanded by Anthony Anderson, who, ironically, is a pastor.

In this allegorical play, the eccentric Captain Shorover's home hosts a cast, each of whom represents some evil in the modern world.

Barbara, the granddaughter of an earl, is busy saving souls in the Salvation Army while her father, maintaining that poverty is the worst of crimes, runs a munitions factory.

According to George Bernard Shaw, Joan of Arc was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was one of the first apostles of nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic realism in warfare. She also refused to accept the specific woman's lot, and dressed and fought and lived as men did. Shaw's exploration of the story of this ingenuous and eponymous heroine is set in six scenes and an epilogue, which takes place in 1456, when the church cleared Joan of the charge of heresy and condemned her accusers of corruption.

Wild, wacky, and wonderful are the characters involved in this debate-in-one-sitting. The Tarlton conservatory is the scene of many a Shavian skirmish: parents vying with children, sibling rivalry, and the battle of the sexes. An airplane crashing into the greenhouse, a gunner, and a Polish daredevil complicate matters even further!