Project Shaw
"The Interlude at the Playhouse"
"The King, the Constitution and the Lady"
"The Music-Cure"
Monthly readings of Bernard Shaw Plays
Monday evenings at 7 PM
Directed by David Staller
The Players Club
16 Gramercy Park South
www.projectshaw.com
 Producer and director David Staller helms this massive theatrical event.
In introducing three Shaw one-acts that are currently performing, Staller said that he decided to tackle this long and difficult project—it's a 63 play cycle, after all—after George W. Bush's re-election because Staller and his collaborators felt that Shaw’s wit and wisdom would serve as a needed antidote to the current political climate. After the evening’s host theater critic Howard Kissel placed this trio of one acts in the context of Shaw’s life and times, four eminent actors—Barrett Foa, George S. Irving, Marian Seldes and Paxton Whitehead—enchanted the packed house with comedic readings of several lesser lights in the Shaw canon.
The opening “The Interlude at the Playhouse,” written exactly a century ago, is a frothy curtain-raiser about the opening night of a new London theater, and the closing playlet, “The Music-Cure,” from 1913, is best described by its author’s subtitle: “A Piece of Utter Nonsense.” Both showcase famous Shavian wit, but the middle piece “The King, the Constitution and the Lady,” originally published in the “Evening Standard” newspaper in 1936, is something else entirely.
 George Bernard Shaw is widely considered one of modern culture's leading wits; he won both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award.
In each of these one acts, the actors deliver Shaw’s still-stinging dialogue with the proper finesse and vocal inflections it deserves but often doesn’t receive. Rounding out the evening, Kissel and the actors took turns reading brief but hilarious and thoughtful excerpts from Shaw’s letters, prefaces to plays and other writings.
Such a splendid evening of civilized comedy is a real treat, and at $15 a seat, “Project Shaw” easily becomes one of the the biggest theater bargains in New York. Don't miss it.
Upcoming performances:
March 19, 2007 — "Doctor's Dillema"
April 23, 2007 — "Androcles and the Lion"
May 21, 2007 — "Admirable Bashville"
June 18, 2007 — "Village Wooing & How He Lied to Her Husband"
July 23, 2007 — "The Millionaires"
September 17, 2007 — "Man and Superman"
October 22, 2007 — "Press Cuttings & Passion, Poison and Petrifaction"
November 19, 2007 — "Widowers Houses"
December 17, 2007 — "Pygmalion"
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