Doctor's Dilemma, Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, Captain Brassbound's Conversion.
.........................................................................
The Doctor's Dilemma:-
When it comes to a choice of only one patient you can save, who do you choose - is it the rogue with an attractive wife, or a sincere poor colleague who did much good and helped the poor and has no money left?
Sunday, September 21, 2008.
............................................................
............................................................
Pygmalion:-
This is the original play that the very famous and popular "My fair Lady" is based on, except that was more of a sweet version, and this retains the original English, perhaps British or even Irish, taste - not sweet, not sour, not bitter or hot, but a little salt and some of that sixth taste that is called "kasaila" or "kashaaya" which means tea in the old medicinal sense.
Here at the end there is a very well written epilogue that explains why the professor does not propose to any woman or have any romantic affair with any woman (and certainly with no man either) - not as a sickness on his part, but as a matter of evolution, and he is very evolved indeed.
Unlike US of today the social norms of Britain then were quite different and sex was not a compulsory activity to prove one was normal, and for that matter normal was never defined as average, either.
So eccentricity was not only allowed it positively thrived and flourished, and benefited the society enormously. Men like the professor could devote their time and energy to their preferred pursuits. He does end up baffled and quite unable to escape Elizabeth Dolittle though.
Friday, July 9, 2010.
............................................................
............................................................
Major Barbara:-
A delightful look at various prevalent notions and hypocrisies of the times - and realities as they are. Salvation Army, church, politics as a career, ethics of business; niceties of law that might make one illegitimate in UK or at least in England but not in Australia, much less anywhere else in the world; and inheritance vs competence, when it is about running a business.
US, particularly NRA of US (as in gun lobby) seem to have adopted the creed of one of the characters in this to an extent that poor Mr. Shaw could never have imagined - "seem to" being the key here. But on the other hand, who knows, he would perhaps have said that neither NRA of US nor he were wrong, and that any society that allows such happenings without curbing them with laws that made sense and protected children perhaps deserved the grief they allowed the arms manufacturers and dealers to let loose on them. And really US has much that is legal in US but illegal in Europe in many countries, or at least those that matter. Germany for example has outlawed any organisations or pictures to do with their past horror - but not US where those proliferate; so guns too, and the consequent stupidity of innocent persons and your own children massacred in their own homes and schools.
Gun lobby of US - and much else of the world - might claim they follow this very intelligent writer for ethics, but if you look at it with a scrutiny, actually, no they don't; they are doing precisely what the writer cautions against, that is, mixing politics and business - for example in deciding who they will or will not sell to (or allow to carry arms), whether on personal level in the country (men get license easily, women don't, even though they are far more in need of self defence, whether from personal attackers or home robbers and so on), or on global level about nations and gangs (here there is no need of examples - they are far too obvious, well known), therefore making it a mess - or at least helping politics do so.
That said, this is of course an extremely intelligent play as almost everything written by this writer is; this one deals with an arms dealer and the possible social embarrassment his family with aristocratic connections must go through - his son requires that the father help him without allowing it to be known, since he needs to have a social status - and various issues around the question, morality vs. arms manufacturer.
Saturday, July 10, 2010.
............................................................
............................................................
Heartbreak House:-
I found it confusing then - perhaps that was the intention of the writer after all.
Monday, September 22, 2008.
............................................................
............................................................
Captain Brassbound's Conversion:-
For a long time this was a very favourite play and that merely means when you have lived so much more and read as well, other works add to the favourite lists.
It is an amazing play, beginning with what might be - or should be - a common fear in minds of all colonial masters traveling in parts they misruled once; a bandit capturing and kidnapping a small party of travellers and promising to sell the lord of the group to a dreaded ruler for beheading after a few games.
And from this dreadful start, it then proceeds into a delightful play, with one pompous man (the ex colonial ruler sort, naturally) brought down by one of his own party - his sister-in-law, and the bandit outsmarted by her kind and sympathetic but shrewd dealing with the situation, so he comes out looking like a hero who saved them, in fact.
One of the lines - "it becomes clear that an agitated man pacing furiously cannot win against a woman knitting calmly" - of course this is as I remember it after the few decades it has been since I read it yet again for pleasure. He wrote it much better, of course.
Saturday, September 27, 2008.
............................................................
............................................................
