Theatre in Review: Man and Superman (Irish Repertory Theatre)

The Irish Repertory Theatre's production of Man and Superman is the theatrical equivalent of one of those package tours that drag tourists through six countries in seven days. There's time only for the most famous highlights, and, as you breeze past them, you barely have a chance to take them in.

We don't get many productions of George Bernard Shaw's 1903 opus, and there's a reason for that. It's a sex comedy with a bad case of elephantiasis; presented uncut, it can run five hours. The playwright Jean Kerr once noted, "I don't want to see the uncut version of anything," a remark that certainly applies here. Certainly there is much to love in Man and Superman; it is loaded with glittering observations and a cleverly constructed plot in which a pair of fair young English ladies, their ruthlessness only partially masked by facades of rectitude, run rings around the men in their lives, pursuing marriage and comfortable incomes with a skill that would leave Machiavelli himself agog with admiration. But the action is inflated by pages of infernal blather about the Life Force -- Shaw's philosophic discovery of the moment -- and no point is so well made that it can't be repeated, twice or thrice.

Normally, directors take the easy way out and remove the Don Juan in Hell sequence, a lengthy dream scene in which four of the characters, assuming identities taken from the opera Don Giovanni, sit down and talk at stupefying length about Heaven, Hell, Mozart, Nietzsche, and just about anything else that happens to wander through their minds. It accounts for a good two hours; take it out and a few internal cuts will net you a running time of just under three hours. At the Irish Rep, David Staller, who directed, has decided to give us a taste of the entire work, keeping about 45 minutes of Don Juan in Hell and making commensurate cuts in the main text, for a running time of approximately two hours and 50 minutes.

The result, oddly enough, put me in mind of the 90-minute version of Phantom of the Opera, which played Las Vegas. Nothing obvious is missing, but events happen at such a rapid clip that it becomes difficult to savor them. Staller has some lovely ideas; the production begins with the cast on stage, passing a copy of the script around and quoting some of the text's greatest hits. ("Lack of money is the root of all evil.") It's a kind of verbal overture, and it's delightful enough to be repeated more than once. There are many tasty moments, such as when Brian Murray, as a pillar of conventional wisdom, tosses an offending book on the floor ("I have not read it, of course," he assures us), and when Max Gordon Moore, as Jack, the play's resident anarchist, condemns Ann, his allegedly innocent young ward, as a "lioness," adding, "She breaks everybody's back with the stroke of her paw; but the question is, which of us will she eat?" And as Ann, Janie Brookshire gives as good as she gets; accused by Jack of being a hypocrite, she replies, without turning a hair, "Women who are not hypocrites go about in rational dress and are insulted and get into all sorts of hot water. And then their husbands get dragged in too. You want a wife you can depend on."

Still, the fun is somewhat constrained by a cast that seems grimly determined to get through the script in their allotted three hours. As a result, an air of forced jollity reigns, a syndrome that can strike any Shavian revival in the best of circumstances. (The symptoms include an unnecessary amount of twinkling among the actors, which, combined with the headlong pace, creates the feeling of being on a cruise where everyone is grimly determined to have a simply marvelous time.) Under these conditions, Don Juan in Hell is a total washout; it's a difficult piece even on a good day, and it needs an extraordinary amount of nuance and sophistication. This is not to say that Staller's cast is incapable of providing such amenities; the finest actors in the world could probably do little with the brief excerpt hastily offered here.

It's also true that Staller and his designers haven't entirely solved the problem of presenting the play -- which begins in a London town house and moves through the Spanish countryside, with a side trip to Hell before ending up in a garden in Granada -- in the Irish Rep's tiny space. James Noone's set -- an elegantly gilded drawing room, with lovely Art Nouveau touches including wall moldings that resemble a forest of trees -- is just about perfect for the first scene, but fits awkwardly with the rest. (There are some creative touches, however; a table, when turned around, has a façade like the front of a vintage automobile, for a scene in which Jack spars with Straker, his chauffeur.)

On the other hand, the cast includes some fresh faces that you'll want to see again. As Jack, Moore parses his lines for every silken irony, leaping from one impertinency to the next with impressive agility. Dismissing Murray's outraged old duffer ("Not an idea in his head past 1860"), commenting on the English habit of regarding the world as "a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character," or realizing, with mounting panic, that he is sitting directly in Ann's sights, he impresses as a young leading man with solid classical technique and an appealing air of intelligence. Brookshire's Ann has a sly way of disowning the desires that she pursues with such avidity; she can also toss her skirt and make like a pert cockney maid when it suits her designing ways. Margaret Loesser Robinson does wonders with the secondary character of Violet, who, having settled on a husband, throws over convention with a zest that rattles the nerves of everyone around her. Most treasurable is her look of horror when her young husband renounces his fortune to his outraged father; as man and boy do battle, she nervously eyes the check that passes between then, finally pocketing it herself for safekeeping. Among the old pros, Murray -- his eyes popping in shock, his gravelly voice rumbling in profound disapproval at a younger generation gone mad -- is a delight, as is Laurie Kennedy as Ann's mother, exhausted by the task of trying to rein in her scheming offspring. ("She'd meet her match in you, Jack. I'd like to see her meet her match. Oh, but how I'd like to see her meet her match!" she says, notes of delight and hysteria mingling in her ever-rising voice.)

If some of the others don't make as much of an impression -- and if Jonathan Hammond seems more than a little marooned as a Spanish brigand who shows up to rob Jack and stays around to intellectually spar with him -- it may be because cuts to the text have left their impression little bit hobbled. In any case, there are also fine contributions from Theresa Squire (costumes), Kirk Bookman (lighting), and M. Florian Staab (sound).

And, since the last major New York production was in 1987 (and, on Broadway, in 1978), this Man and Superman is to be ignored at one's peril. Still, for all its impudent humors, it doesn't come close to replacing my memories of the 1987 Roundabout revival, with, among others, David Birney as Jack, Frances Conroy as Ann, and Kim Hunter as her mother. (Michael Cumpsty was Ann's unrequited suitor, Octavius). In such glittering company, the young Harriet Harris dazzled as Violet, her calculating mind colliding hilariously with her near-perfect command of manners. This production has its moments, but it provides no such revelations. How could it? Nobody has the time.--David Barbour