Gingold Theatrical Group (David Staller, Artistic Director) will continue the 15th Season of Project Shaw, a special series of evenings of plays that embrace human rights and free speech. All of GTG's programming, inspired by the works of George Bernard Shaw, are designed to provoke peaceful discussion and activism. This series is presented monthly at Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre (2537 Broadway at 95th Street).

PROJECT SHAW will present What Every Woman Knows by James M. Barrie for one night only on Monday February 24th (7pm). Kathy Gail MacGowan directs a cast that features Tony Head, Daniel Jenkins, Maryann Plunkett, Celestine Rae, Mike Smith Rivera, A.J. Shively, Robbie Simpson, and Mirirai Sitole. Susanna Frazer will serve as the Narrator.

A social satire set in England and Scotland during the early 20th century, What Every Woman Knows centers around the perennially unmarried Maggie Wylie and John Shand, an ambitious young student, who promises to marry Maggie after five years if her family pays for his education. Following his successful bid for a seat in Parliament, Shand is set upon by the notoriously seductive Lady Sybil. Maggie, determined to find her own full potential, creates a plan in the hopes of proving to both herself and to John that she is an invaluable asset to him and to their community. First produced in 1908, What Every Woman Knows is considered one of Barrie's most realistic and important theatrical works. Graced with bursts of sly wit and dramatic irony, it continues to delight.

"Few playwrights rivaled Shaw's feminist theatrical creations more than James M. Barrie. Best known for his immortal Peter Pan, most of his plays championed the struggle of women in his time. What Every Woman Knows is generally regarded as his most fully realized play. Its comedic look at how men tend to take women for granted seems just as timely as ever and we're thrilled to finally have the opportunity to bring it to New Yorkers," said Mr. Staller.

The 15th season will continue with Shaw Songs @ The Players! directed by John Gary La Rosa on April 20 (PLEASE NOTE: this event will take place at The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South), Shaw's Saint Joan, directed by Vivienne Benesch on May 18th, He and She by Rachel Crothers on June 22nd, Shaw's The Apple Cart on July 20th, directed by Meredith McDonough, A Scintillating Shaw Talk on October 26th, The Torch Bearers by George Kelly directed by Charlotte Moore on November 2nd, and Shaw's Androcles and the Lion directed by Pamela Hunt ending the 2020 season on December 14th.

All the plays in this series (except Shaw Songs @ The Players) will be presented in a concert-reading format at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th Street. Tickets are $40 and are available by calling 212-864-5400 or online at http://www.symphonyspace.org. Special reserved VIP seating available for $55 by contacting the Gingold office 212-355-7823 or info@gingoldgroup.org. Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre space is completely accessible. Infra-red hearing devices are also available.

On April 20th, Project Shaw will present a special evening, Shaw Songs @ The Players, a special treat, an evening of music that Shaw enjoyed, including popular music of his time, works by Gilbert & Sullivan, and more! For this very special event we'll be returning to the original home of Project Shaw, the beautiful Players Club at 16 Gramercy Park South. Cast and ticket information will be announced shortly.

In addition to Project Shaw, this fall GTG will return to Theatre Row with the annual mainstage production. This season will offer Shaw's high-action swashbuckling comedy The Devil's Disciple, based on actual events during the American Revolution. This limited Off-Broadway engagement will run in October and November at Theatre Row's Stage One. Cast & design team will be announced this Spring.

Now celebrating its 15th year, Gingold Theatrical Group's Project Shaw made history in December 2009 as the first company ever to present performances of every one of Shaw's 65 plays (including full-length works, one-acts and sketches). They are now also including plays by writers who share Shaw's activist socio-political views embracing human rights and free speech, including work by Chekhov, Ibsen, Elizabeth Robins, Rachel Crothers, Pinero, Wilde, Barrie, and Harley Granville-Barker. GTG's other programs include its new play development and educational programs. For those interested in lively off-site discourses, each Project Shaw event is followed by a talk-back with cast members. GTG's David Staller and Stephen Brown-Fried also host a monthly Shaw Club discussion group.

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Project Shaw Will Continue 2020 Season with WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS by JM Barrie - Broadway World

Nick Brancaccio

Updated: January 28, 2020

Character Geoffery Cassilis played by Brennan Roberts holds the hand of his would-be fiancee Ethel Borridge played by Kyra Scarlett, centre right, as their mothers Mrs. Cassilis, left, played by Sarah Hagarty and Mrs. Borridge, Avery MacDonald, right, come into the scene during University Players production of The Cassilis Engagement at Essex Hall Theatre University of Windsor Tuesday. Show opens January 31 at 8 PM. Nick Brancaccio / Windsor Star

University Players are set to present their latest production, The Cassilis Engagement, described as a comedy for lovers and anti-romantics alike.

The play, written by St. John Hankin and subtitled Comedy for Mothers, is a clash of the classes. Upper-class Geoffery Cassilis and lower-class Ethel Borridge are determined to tie the knot, and now the refined Mrs. Cassilis must take on the loud and obnoxious Mrs. Borridge as their children bring them together to plan the wedding.

Mrs. Cassilis invites the would-be fiance and her mother to their sprawling country estate to introduce them to the demands of high society. Much to Ethels embarrassment, her mother cant help but show her lack of etiquette at every turn, whether it is yawning at breakfast or bursting into a raunchy after-dinner song.

This production marks the first time the show has been staged locally. St. John Hankin was a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, although his plays are seldom produced.

The Countess of Remenham, played by Katelyn Doyle, reacts to a comment by Mrs. Cassilis while having tea during University Players production of The Cassilis Engagement at Essex Hall Theatre University of Windsor Tuesday. Show opens January 31 at 8 PM. Nick Brancaccio / Windsor Star

He went largely neglected for nearly a hundred years before several revivals of his work were produced at the Shaw Festival in Niagara, in New York, and in London, England in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Cassilis Engagement is a great example of late Edwardian comedy.

The Cassilis Engagement opens Jan. 31 with an 8 p.m. performance at Essex Hall Theatre. The show runs approximately two hours and is recommended for ages 14 and up.

Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at universityplayers.com or by calling the box office at 519-253-3000 ext. 2808. Regular price tickets start at $19.

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Photos: University Players to stage The Cassilis Engagement - Windsor Star

Todays birthdays

Rosamund Pike (pictured), actress, 41

Nick Mason, rock musician (Pink Floyd), 76

Mimi Rogers, actress, 64

Bridget Fonda, actress, 56

Alan Cumming, actor/director, 55

Robbie Earle, former footballer, 55

Mike Patton, rock singer (Faith No More), 52

Dean Headley, former cricketer, 50

Mark Owen, singer (Take That), 48

Marat Safin, retired tennis player, 40

1596: Sir Francis Drake died at sea off Panama.

1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg. He composed 20 operas, 17 masses, 41 symphonies, 27 string quartets and 21 piano concertos and still died a pauper in 1791, aged 35.

1778: Joseph Bramah patented the valved flush toilet.

1832: Lewis Carroll, childrens author, was born in Daresbury, near Warrington, as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

1859: Kaiser Wilhelm II, third German emperor and grandson of Queen Victoria, was born. He was forced to abdicate after World War I.

1879: ThomasEdison patented his electric lamp.

1885: Jerome Kern, US composer regarded as the father of the modern musical, was born in New York. His major work was Show Boat.

1901: Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer whose operas include Rigoletto, Traviata and Aida, died aged 87.

1926: John Logie Baird gave a public demonstration of television to members of the Royal Institution in London.

1944: The 900-day siege of Leningrad ended.

1951: Atomic bombs were tested in Nevada for the first time.

1967: Round-the-world yachtsman Francis Chichester was knighted by the Queen at Greenwich with a sword which once belonged to Sir Francis Drake.

1973: America signed a ceasefire to end its military action in Vietnam (above).

1992: Gennifer Flowers accused Arkansas governor Bill Clinton of being a liar after he denied having a 12-year affair with her.

2010: American novelist JD Salinger, author of The Catcher In The Rye, died aged 91.

There is no truth behind it. Unless journalists know something more than I do Actor James Norton (pictured) addresses speculation he will be the next James Bond

Suppose the world were only one of Gods jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw

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On this day: January 27 - Metro Newspaper UK

When it was announced earlier this month that Cliff Harris will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I thought back to the Saturdays spent watching him play college football and the Sundays spent watching him play professional football. Those games were a big part of my formative years. More than anything, though, I thought about men and women from towns such as Benton, Des Arc, Bearden and Glenwood. The men served their country during World War II, came home and finished college, got married and went to work. The women raised children and later doted on grandchildren while taking care of their husbands. They truly were the Greatest Generation.

Cliff, who starred in college at Ouachita Baptist University and in the pros for the Dallas Cowboys, will no doubt think of his parents when he receives pro football's greatest honor. His father, O.J. "Buddy" Harris, played with my father at Ouachita in the 1940s. O.J. was a linebacker and center. He went on to be a war hero during World War II, earning the P-38 Flying Cross after being shot down over the Pacific.

Cliff's mother, who we knew as Big Margaret since Cliff also had a sister named Margaret, had attended what's now Henderson State University. My parents (who hailed from Benton and Des Arc) and Cliff's parents (who hailed from Bearden and Glenwood) became close friends with each other along with couples such as the Kemps and McHaneys. I marveled at the fact that these couples who first met in the 1940s remained so close through all the ups and downs, the moves and changes, the passing decades. They're gone now, but the examples they set remain.

Cliff was born in Fayetteville and spent most of his childhood in Hot Springs. Just before his senior year in high school, Arkansas Power & Light Co. transferred his father to Des Arc. As luck would have it, there was a home available adjacent to my grandparents' house on Erwin Street. The Harris family moved in, so we had my grandparents and family friends living on the same Des Arc street.

Coach John Rollins decided to play Cliff at quarterback his senior year, and Cliff performed well for the Eagles. He didn't, however, receive college scholarship offers after graduating in the spring of 1966.

Buddy Benson, who had become Ouachita's head football coach in 1965, was urged by O.J. Harris' former teammates--including my father--to offer Cliff a scholarship. Benson, who would go on to serve 31 years as Ouachita's coach and be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, gave Cliff his only scholarship offer. Living a block from Ouachita's football stadium (I was ages 7-10 during the four seasons Cliff played there), I walked the sidelines as a water boy. Cliff's sister and my sister later attended Ouachita together.

On game days, O.J. and Big Margaret would come to our house for lunch. Cliff's grandfather would drive his Cadillac up from Bearden and his grandmother, a beloved Glenwood teacher named Amy Weaver, also would show up. Those were fun days, and I felt special because our house was game-day headquarters.

Cliff made a name for himself while playing in the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference from 1966-69, but was overlooked in the NFL draft. Gil Brandt, who headed the highly touted scouting operation for the Cowboys, was aware of the hard-hitting player from the small school in Arkadelphia. The Cowboys signed Cliff as a free agent, thinking there was a chance he could make the team. A decade and five Super Bowls later, Cliff retired from football.

When Cliff played for the Cowboys from 1970-79, we spent many weekends in the Dallas area watching games. Coach Tom Landry required players to stay in a hotel the night before each home game. Once the team moved from the Cotton Bowl at the Texas State Fairgrounds to Texas Stadium in Irving, the team hotel was the Holiday Inn Regal Row, which was in a nondescript warehouse district in Irving. We would get a room at the team hotel on Saturday nights and ride a chartered bus to games on Sunday.

George Bernard Shaw wrote that "youth is wasted on the young." True to form, I didn't fully appreciate those weekends in the 1970s. It was a rare opportunity for a boy from Arkansas to be around one of the greatest groups of players and coaches ever assembled. Landry was already an icon. Even the general manager (Tex Schramm), the director of player personnel (Brandt), the man who played the national anthem on the trumpet before home games (Tommy Loy) and the public address announcers (Bill Melton and James Jennings) were celebrities.

In addition to playing in those five Super Bowls (the Cowboys won two of them), Cliff was named to the Pro Bowl six times and was a first team All-NFL player for four consecutive seasons by both The Associated Press and the Pro Football Writers Association. He was named to the Dallas Silver Season All-Time Team, was selected by Sports Illustrated as the free safety on the magazine's All-Time Dream Team, was given the NFL Alumni Legends Award and was the free safety for the NFL All-Decade Team for the 1970s.

In 2004, Cliff was inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor. In 2013, the Little Rock Touchdown Club created the Cliff Harris Award, given annually to the best defensive player in small college football. And in 2014, Ouachita named its newly renovated football stadium Cliff Harris Stadium.

To understand what has driven Cliff through the years, one must first understand the story of his father. By age 50, the elder Harris had lost most of his sight due to diabetes. By the time Cliff began playing for the Cowboys, his father was having a hard time finding him on the field. At home, O.J. would turn down the sound on the television and listen to the radio broadcasts of Dallas games.

"Cliff didn't think much about it back then," Kevin Sherrington wrote a few years ago in The Dallas Morning News. "He was too caught up making and keeping his position with the Cowboys. . . . Cliff says he is who he is because of his father. He figures he still owes him."

"My dad never flew again after the war," Cliff says. "I played in five Super Bowls, and he never got to live his dream. I feel kind of guilty because I was so focused on myself all those years. I feel like I didn't do him justice."

I never saw O.J. Harris have a bad day after losing his sight. He was a profile in courage. And Big Margaret was always there for him. She wasn't a big woman in a physical sense. It was her personality that was big. Like her husband, the redheaded lady was always upbeat. When she died in October 2009 at age 83, her obituary stated: "Her devotion to her husband was an inspiration to all those around her."

Big Margaret had taken her wedding vows seriously--every word of them. She had given up a potential singing career to marry O.J. in February 1946, though her voice would continue to bless the churches she attended. During her funeral service at Piney Grove United Methodist Church near Hot Springs, there was much talk about her singing ability. Her strong voice also was effective in questioning the calls of football officials from the stands.

Through tenacity and a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed, Cliff overcame numerous obstacles in his football career to become one of the best defensive players in history. His parents, inspirations for all of us who knew them, wouldn't have had it any other way.

------------v------------

Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 01/26/2020

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REX NELSON: The ties that bind - NWAOnline

Ah, perfection! It's what so many of us unthinkingly strive for. Yet achieving perfection, the pedestal Lerner & Loewe's MY FAIR LADY perches upon in the eyes of so many, invites a whole set of calamities, chiefly complacency and inertia. Worshipers at the altar of perfection would understandably strive to replicate the voice of Julie Andrews and the grace of Audrey Hepburn in presenting Eliza Doolittle - or the sublimely calibrated gruffness of Rex Harrison in reviving Professor Henry Higgins.

Their perfection has seemed to add layers of tamper-proof portrayals to Frederick Loewe's cavalcade of memorable melodies, Alan Jay Lerner's concise and pungent lyrics, and the duo's deft adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Over the decades since it premiered on Broadway in 1959, our concepts of the ideal Fair Lady have become the sound of the original cast album (a #1 best seller) and the lavish look of the Hollywood film (Oscar for Best Picture).

But what about the stage show? There we tend to be rather vague. If you've been following theatre in Charlotte for the past 30 years or so, seeing as many as half-a-dozen local revivals as I have, you dimly remember one or two of them. Last national FAIR LADY tour to stop in Charlotte? Never happened before the current tour now playing at Ovens Auditorium.

Launched this past December, five months after it closed on Broadway, the acclaimed Lincoln Center Theater production directed by Bartlett Sher dares to mess with the perfect musical. You'll most readily notice Sher's ministrations in the final scene, where Eliza's response to Higgins' peremptory "Fetch me my slippers!" seems to draw a "did-that-really-happen?" reaction from the Professor. But Sher also makes a sumptuous meal of "The Servant's Chorus," a song that I could not remember hearing live before, an 84-second relic from the film soundtrack that was apparently shoehorned into the 1993 revival.

The insertion of this interlude, between "Just You Wait" - with its gawky vowels and dropped aitches - and Liza's breakthrough "Rain in Spain," makes delicious dramatic sense, giving us some idea of the flower girl's arduous toil to master proper English pronunciation and Higgins' merciless prodding. A gaggle of servants scurries through a mammoth two-story house that Sher has tasked set designer Michael Yeargen to build in such grand fashion that it revolves, showing us three different rooms in Higgins' home.

Extending Liza's struggles into epic spectacle makes her sudden latenight "Rain in Spain" triumph that much more rewarding. The crowning point of the sequence, Liza's exuberant "I Could Have Danced All Night" after Higgins and servants have wearily trudged off to sleep, had never moved me so much before, a true revelation.

But improving on perfection ran into technical difficulties on opening night. To clear the upstage wall for its subsequent rotations - and likely to ensure its stability - the two-story set must come forward a few feet toward the audience before it's properly secured and ready to roll. Instead, there was a slight lurch before the mighty edifice stalled. True to the hallowed show-must-go-on spirit, Laird Mackintosh as Higgins launched into the scene with one of his butlers, only to be shut down by the crew. Houselights came up as the curtain came down, and we heard the dreaded announcement on the PA, which confirmed a problem rather than describing it.

The third stop on the new MY FAIR LADY tour had come to a dead stop. After a half-hour delay, I felt thankful that the snafu had occurred at the top of the scene so that the whole revelatory sequence was eventually delivered without interruption. Mackintosh as Professor Higgins and Shereen Ahmed as Eliza make a wonderful pair. Ahmed doesn't have the #MeToo energy and cleverness attributed to Lauren Ambrose when she brought this production to Lincoln Center in 2018. She almost doesn't need to with all the abrasiveness, conceit, and disregard that Mackintosh brings to Higgins' misogynistic treatment of Eliza.

We feel like Eliza is being abused long before the Professor's aborted physical attack on her, and Mackintosh never surrenders all the cruel edge of Lerner's lyrics in "I'm an Ordinary Man" and "A Hymn to Him" to their comedy. Nor is there more potent testimony to Eliza's triumph than Mackintosh's chastened, broken rendition of "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." Sher manages to remind us in his nuanced staging that women are still mobilizing behind the cause of suffrage at the time the action is set in 1912. We can cut some slack, then, if Ahmed seems a little deferential towards Higgins' erudition, wealth, and gender - and, in turn, we can cut Mackintosh some slack for his troglodyte arrogance.

Sher also judges keenly in giving us a more youthful Higgins, for Mackintosh can react to Ahmed emotionally as she wins his admiration, almost sweeping away thoughts of her desirability as a maidservant or private secretary. That youthful casting gives Ahmed more to be giddy about when Higgins shows her his first glimmer of approval and pride. In "I Could Have Danced All Night," Ahmed's whole body seems to awaken to undreamed-of possibilities that surpass the prospect of becoming a private secretary or a flower shop owner.

Ahmed does sing superbly, showing steel and vitality in her bellicose songs, "Just You Wait," "Show Me," and "Without You." Helped along by Catherine Zuber's smashing costumes, Ahmed also transforms magnificently from the grubby Cockney we meet in the opening scene into a vision of regal elegance that credibly explodes Higgins' wildest expectations of success for his phonetic experimentations - and his gentlemen's bet with Colonel Pickering.

Pickering and Higgins' patrician mom, whom you might expect to oppose Eliza, turn out to be her staunchest supporters. Sher doesn't tamper with their traditional essences, bespeaking the good-heartedness of upper-crust Brits, getting zesty and stylish performances from Leslie Alexander as Mrs. Higgins and Kevin Pariseau as the Colonel.

Yet when it comes to the young gentleman smitten by Eliza, Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Sher calls upon Sam Simahk to augment the chap's dopiness and devotion. That allows for a broader comical take on Eliza's gaucheries at the Ascot races in her society debut. And it equips Liza with a lovestruck, puppy dog valet throughout most of Act 2, reaffirming her new sheen. Simahk only slightly trims back the rhapsodic splendor of "On the Street Where You Live" in pulling off this alteration.

Drunken, vulgar, and rascally, Adam Grupper as the irrepressible Alfred P. Doolittle now seems heaven-sent, purposed to make Higgins seem enlightened and evolved by comparison. Holding his hat respectfully in Higgins' study as he sells his daughter's virtue for five pounds sterling, or dancing the night away with barroom sluts the night before his wedding, Grupper is a quintessential scoundrel, lit up with earthy, peasant merriment. His "Get Me to the Church on Time" production number is even more extravagant than the pivotal "Servant's Chorus," with climactic funeral imagery in Christopher Gattelli's choreography on loan from the Scrooge movie musical.

As Higgins proceeded afterwards to toy with thoughts of reconciliation and matrimony, I could see more clearly than ever before that he and Doolittle are kindred spirits. I could also appreciate more keenly the delicious irony that Higgins' benevolent sponsorship of Doolittle's welfare, which has a sequel beyond that five-pound note, is what lands Alfred P. in his matrimonial pickle.

But if you don't like the ambiguous ending of MY FAIR LADY, you can take comfort in the fact that George Bernard Shaw didn't write it. Unlike the 1938 screen version, the true source of Lerner's adaptation, the GBS play ends with Higgins exclaiming, "Marry Freddy, ha!" A 14-page postscript incorporates Shaw's prognostications about his vibrant protagonists' futures.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

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BWW Review: Sher Tinkers With MY FAIR LADY, Recalibrating Its Perfections - Broadway World

Charlotte Payne-Townshend is not exactly a household name.

In fact, in todays celebrity-obsessed culture, its very possible one might hear it and think Will and Kates four-year-old daughter has only gone off and adopted a bizarre double-barrelled street name to shake off her royal duties.

But for most normal folk, its met with an empty stare, a dismissive shrug and a puzzled, Who the heck is that?

Dont fear - Mrs Shaw Herself is here to answer that question.

Created by musician Helen Tierney and actress Alexis Leighton, this one-woman play is an intimate glimpse into the life of Charlotte Payne Townshend, Irish heiress and activist - who also happened to be the wife of the legendary George Bernard Shaw.

Tierney seeks to restore the spirit of this unsung hero, whose achievements have historically been outshone by the glare of her husbands.

An affluent political campaigner who championed the education of women, Charlotte was one of the key Irish players in the feminist movement of the early twentieth century.

Rather than hoard or squander her riches, she exploited her privilege to benefit others.

She single-handedly funded a scholarship for women at the London School of Economics and even donated a hefty 1000 to the establishment of its Shaw Library in 1939.

She was also a driving force in the Fabian Womens Group, which promoted suffrage equality for women through debates and publications.

And yet, despite her major contributions to society, she has yet to receive the acclaim she so evidently deserves.

This hour-long production lifts Charlotte from the pages of her husbands writings, granting her a platform to speak freely and express her individuality to her audience.

By weaving the script exclusively out of genuine diaries and letters, every line drips with authenticity and passion.

Tierney explains this decision to rely on primary sources.

Its an hour where they can get to know her in her own words. We want people to have a real sense of her when they leave the play.

To truly nurture this sense, Tierney splashes the play with the voices of Charlottes friends and acquaintances.

Chameleon actress Leighton embodies an array of different characters, playing Charlotte, George Bernard Shaw, Beatrice Webb and more.

This metamorphosis not only softens the potential stagnation of a one-person play, it enhances the audiences understanding of Charlotte.

As Tierney explains: We learn about her from other peoples words.

Its a panoramic view of Charlotte Payne Townshend - a 360 degrees rotation of a woman who has hovered as a 2D background character for too long.

The message is simple - the most important part of Mrs Shaw, is in fact, herself.

Tierney hopes that that this portrayal will exemplify Charlottes multi-faceted personality. Her marriage to a notorious playboy may have drew some concerns, but it never inhibited her pursuit of success and happiness.

Tierney explains that the play emphasises this independence, explaining: Shes not a victim. Shes feisty, she has ideas of her own.

In many ways, it was this unyielding gumption that fuelled her unconventional relationship with one of Irelands most beloved writers.

Despite their practice of celibacy, Charlotte and George remained together for over 40 years.

It is said that their bond was cemented by their mutual respect for each others endeavours - she helped him craft fiction, he helped her actualise realities.

Their marriage may have been sexless, but it certainly wasnt loveless.

Tierney argues that their story lends a glimmer of hope to a society blotted by billowing divorce rates.

Its a tale of a marriage that survives. He could be infuriating to live with and maybe she wasnt easy either, but they both gave things to each other that are really positive. Often you dont see that side of a marriage.

By recognising her as both an individual and a partner, the play tackles the widespread misconception that the combination of feminism and marriage is incongruent.

Charlottes role as a wife was a part of her, but it was by no means, all of her.

Mrs Shaw Herself will be performed in London on February 1 as part of the Herstory Light Festival.

Inspired by one of Irelands patron saints, St. Brigid, this three-day long event celebrates the Irish women of our present and our past.

Tierney believes this is an ideal environment to stage the play, comparing the silencing of Charlottes achievements under the volume of her husbands legacy to how St. Brigid has always been in the shadow of St. Patrick.

This homage to Ireland is reflected in Tierneys Celtic harp playing, which gently punctuates each scene and embellishes the effect of Charlottes words.

Charlotte has been introduced to over 30 audiences in the United Kingdom, and Tierney is now planning to bring her home to Ireland. She reveals her hopes to perform it in Cork, where Charlotte was born and raised.

With just one actor, minimal props and modest staging, Mrs Shaw Herself is the farthest thing from a glitzy pantomime.

Viewers wont come away with ringing ears and dizzy eyeballs, high on the rush of high-budget spectacles.

This play doesnt seek to overdose your senses, and, led by such a powerful character, it doesnt need to.

What it does do is introduce you to one of Irelands most underrated heroes, luring you into the depths of her psyche and colouring in the blank her name once drew.

Having sat down with little to no knowledge of Charlotte Payne Townshend, youll stand up with that profound feeling of having met someone you feel like youve known for years.

Rather than cheering bravo after the final scene, you might just find yourself waving goodbye.

Mrs Shaw Herself is at The Intimate Space at Hornsey Church Tower at 2.30pm on February 1. Tickets 10 and 8 on Eventbrite.com.

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One-woman play tells tale of the overlooked wife of George Bernard Shaw - Irish Post

How did you get on? .... Winnie the Pooh and friends, from The Best Bear in All the World (see 16.4). Photograph: Egmont Publishing

1 Jess Willard (the Pottawatomie Giant, lost world heavyweight title fight to Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler/Kid Blackie) 2 Ignacy Jan Paderewski (prime minister of Poland) 3 Somerset Maughams The Moon and Sixpence 4 Suzanne Lenglens (La Divine) at Wimbledon 5 John Alcock and Arthur Brown (from Winston Churchill following transatlantic flight) 6 HMY Iolaire (hit Beasts of Holm off Stornoway, 201 servicemen drowned) 7 The Childrens Newspaper (Arthur Mee) 8 Death of Prince John (their fifth son, aged 13) 9 Theodore Roosevelts (Speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far) 10 Nancy Astor (succeeded her husband as MP for Plymouth in byelection)

1 Patrick Gordon (1635-99) 2 Croagh Patrick 3 Sir Patrick Cullens (George Bernard Shaw, The Doctors Dilemma) 4 Fino San Patricio (Garvey, Jerez) 5 Sir Patrick Spens 6 Patrick OBrian (Aubrey and Maturin in Master and Commander) 7 Patrick Sellar (Highland Clearances) 8 Percy FitzPatrick (Jock of the Bushveld) 9 Patrick Pearse (St Endas/Scoil anna) 10 Patrick Kavanagh (The Great Hunger)

1 Thomas Bond (Jack the Ripper, murderer of Mary Jane Kelly) 2 Francis Camps (Erle Stanley Gardner. The Case of the Duplicate Daughter) 3 John Glaister Junior (Buck Ruxton murders) 4 David Bowen 5 Alec Jeffreys (Colin Pitchfork, Narborough, 1983) 6 Paul Uhlenhuths (Ludwig Tessnow, Rugen, 1901) 7 Donald Teare 8 Keith Simpsons (Mrs Durand-Deacon, victim of John George Haigh, acid bath murderer) 9 Bernard Knights (Karen Price, Cardiff, 1989) 10 Sir Bernard Spilsbury (Operation Mincemeat deception, 1943)

1 Count Jovian (John Buchan, The House of the Four Winds) 2 Count Paris (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) 3 Count Ribbing (Giuseppe Verdi, Un Ballo in Maschera) 4 Count Joseph Dumoulin (consul-general of Swedish Pomerania in CS Forester, The Commodore) 5 Count Fosco (Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White) 6 Count Vronsky (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina) 7 Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas, Edmond Dants) 8 Count Folke Bernadotte 9 Count Orgaz (El Greco) 10 Count Basie (Earl Hines and Duke Ellington)

1 Van Houtens cocoa 2 Wonkas Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight (Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) 3 La Cleste Praline (Joanne Harris, Chocolat) 4 Anthon Berg 5 Frys 6 Henri Nestl (Daniel Peter) 7 Drostes (Jan Missets Nurse) 8 My chocolate cream soldier (George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man, act III) 9 Thorntons 10 Ritter Sport

1 Lord Jesuss (hymn) 2 Cameron Highlands, Malaya (Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists) 3 Maud (Alfred Lord Tennyson, Maud) 4 Hatton Garden 5 Letchworth Garden City 6 Mr McGregors (Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit) 7 Misselthwaite Manor (Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden) 8 Percy French (song, Come Home Paddy Reilly) 9 TE Brown (My Garden) 10 Johnny Crows (Leonard Leslie Brooke, Johnny Crows Garden)

1 Cheltenham (John Betjeman) 2 Dursley (Dursley and Midland Junction Railway) 3 Berkeley Castle (Christopher Marlowe, Edward II) 4 Lechlade 5 Gloucester (Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester) 6 Chipping Campden 7 Tewkesbury (King Edward IV) 8 Slad (Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie) 9 Fairford (St Marys Church) 10 Stow-on-the-Wold

1 Jos Canalejas (November 1912) 2 Joselito (Jos Gmez Ortega, matador, May 1920) 3 Pope Calixtus III (Alfons de Borja) 4 Alfonso XI (The Avenger, 1350) 5 Sancho II (Zamora, 1072) 6 Felipe II (singed beard in Cadiz by Drake, 1587) 7 Francisco Goya, Enrique Granados (Goyescas) 8 Santiago Ramn y Cajal (Nobel prize, 1906) 9 Tio Pepe (Gonzales Byasss Fino sherry, Uncle Joe) 10 El Bilbanito (CS Forester, The Gun)

1 Midshipman Hornblower (CS Forester) 2 Horn of Plenty (fungus) 3 The Golden Horn (GK Chesterton, Lepanto) 4 East Hohenhrn (Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands) 5 Battle of Little Bighorn 6 Weisshorn (John Tyndall, physicist, August 1861) 7 Horning (Arthur Ransome, Coot Club) 8 Horncastle (William Marwood, hangman) 9 The cow with the crumpled horn (This is the House that Jack Built) 10 Hornbill

1 Henry Purcells (Dido and Aeneas) 2 Jeremiah Clarke (Prince of Denmarks March, aka Trumpet Voluntary) 3 Thomas Arne (Ariels Where the bee sucks, there suck I, The Tempest) 4 Hubert Parry (Jerusalem) 5 Edward Elgar (Nimrod, Augustus Jaeger) 6 Ralph Vaughan-Williams (Down Ampney, hymn tune, after Bianco da Siena) 7 Gustav Holsts, Thaxted (Jupiter) 8 Benjamin Britten (Noyes Fludde) 9 William Waltons (Belshazzars Feast) 10 Arthur Sullivans (with WS Gilbert at the Savoy. The Grand Duke or The Statutory Duel)

1 Malgudi (RK Narayan, Swami and Friends) 2 New Delhi (Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger) 3 Madras (Edward Lear, The Book of Nonsense) 4 Simla (Rudyard Kipling, Kim) 5 Allahabad (Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days) 6 Agra (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four) 7 Calcutta (Patrick OBrian, HMS Surprise) 8 Darjeeling (Nel Coward, I Wonder What Happened to Him) 9 Bombay (EM Forster, A Passage to India) 10 Jhansi (Christina Rossetti, poem, The Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857)

1 Dram, Armenia 2 Rand, South Africa (Mary Rand Olympic gold in 1964 long jump) 3 Pula, Botswana 4 Sucre, Ecuador 5 Cordoba, Nicaragua 6 Lek, Albania 7 Birr, Ethiopia (telescope The Leviathan of Parsonstown) 8 Quetzal, Guatemala 9 Dong, Vietnam (Edward Lear) 10 Coln, Costa Rica

1 Lake Baikal (Baikal Teal/bimaculate duck) 2 Toplitzsee (Nazi forgeries of UK bank notes) 3 Lake Peipus (Alexander Nevsky, 5 April 1242) 4 Lac Lman (Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon) 5 Lake Maggiore (Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms) 6 Lake Como (August Strindberg, Frken Julie) 7 Loch Morar (monster) 8 Loch Maree (Botulism, August 1922) 9 Lough Neagh (legend of Finn McCool creating the Isle of Man) 10 Lake Trasimeno (Hannibal v Flaminius 217BC)

1 Raidillon (Spa-Francorchamps, watchmaker since 2001) 2 Interlagos (Brazil, Bico do Pato, Mergulho) 3 Mistral (Le Castelet, Circuit Paul Ricard, France) 4 Remus (Red Bull, Spielberg, Austria) 5 Tosa (Imola, San Marino/Italy) 6 Monza (Italy, Vialone became Ascari) 7 Beckets (Silverstone) 8 Massenet (Monaco, premiere of opera Don Quichotte) 9 Knickerbrook (Oulton Park) 10 Tarzanbocht (Zandvoort, Holland)

1 Ind Coope (Double Diamond slogan) 2 Crosse and Blackwell 3 Holland and Holland (gunsmiths) 4 Winsor and Newton (paint brushes) 5 Patek Philippe (Calibre 89, celebrating 150 years since foundation) 6 Parker Knoll 7 Williams and Humbert (sherry) 8 Bryant and May (imported matches from Sweden) 9 Ratsey and Lapthorn (sailmakers, Cowes) 10 C and A (Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, Sneek)

1 Manhood Hundred (Selsey, within the Rape of Chichester) 2 Hundredweight (112lb in UK, 100lb in US) 3 Chiltern Hundreds 4 Hundred Acre Wood (AA Milne, The House at Pooh Corner) 5 The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014 film) 6 One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garca Mrquez) 7 Hundred Year Hall (two CD live album by the Grateful Dead, following Jerry Garcias death) 8 The Hundred Years war (Battle of Castillon) 9 WG Grace scored his hundredth hundred in 1st class cricket. 10 Your Hundred Best Tunes (1997 and 2003)

1 Tavistock (The Adventure of Silver Blaze) 2 North Walsham (The Adventure of the Dancing Men) 3 Shoscombe (The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place) 4 Mackleton (The Adventure of the Priory School) 5 Waterloo (The Adventure of the Crooked Man) 6 Forest Row (The Adventure of Black Peter) 7 Charing Cross (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez) 8 Winchester (The Adventure of the Copper Beeches) 9 Chislehurst (The Adventure of the Abbey Grange) 10 Canterbury (The Adventure of the Final Problem)

1 Shane Long (scoring quickest goal in Premier League history for Southampton v Watford) 2 Jack Leach (92 runs in Test Match v Ireland) 3 Volodymyr Zelensky (president of Ukraine, following TV series Servant of the People) 4 Norwich Cathedral (George Irvins Helter Skelter) 5 George Mendonsas, (The Kissing Sailor, has died aged 95) 6 Unveiling of statue of Regis, Cunningham and Batson in West Bromwich 7 New Australian 50 dollar note (responsibilty) 8 Franky Zapata (Channel crossing by hoverboard) 9 Abdication of Emperor Akihito and accession of Naruhito to chrysanthemum throne 10 Denbigh plum

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King William's College quiz: the answers | From the Guardian - The Guardian

A FORMER teacher gave up his career to get on stage and into the spotlight.

John Griffiths acted in his spare time but in 1977 decided to dive into the deep end and make it his lifes ambition.

He told the Adver: Funnily enough I started out with the director Im working with now, at the beginning of my career in acting. He asked me to do a show in 1977 when I was a teacher as I was acting on the side, then I went ahead with making it my full-time career and gave up teaching.

I dont regret giving it up at all, its my two combined passions of theatre and travel. Ive travelled all over the world to places like Germany and Austria, its a great way to combine my passions.

John will be playing Major Metcalf in the play as he works alongside Gareth Armstrong for the second time.

Gareth has worked across the world as a director and actor.

Hes directed classics by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, and Nol Coward.

I was a police officer in Agatha Christies Verdict and I was performing in Torquay. He asked me to join him and play a role in Under Milk Wood.

Ive worked in quite a few plays written by Agatha and now Im doing Mousetrap which is in its 68th year, its astounding.

The first showing of the renowned play at the Wyvern Theatre will be on February 10 to 15.

Tickets for the show are between 25.50 to 34.00 varying each night.

To book tickets visit the Wyvern Theatre website at swindontheatres.co.uk

The rest is here:
A former teacher took to the stage to pursue dreams of being theatre star - Swindon Advertiser

For the Year of the Parent, I have in mind a daily undertaking by children to validate their parents. Make a resolution to say something nice to Mum or Dad every day.

Parents can remember their own parents, now grandparents.

My agenda remains improved literacy. This mission could be the lodestone to reunite families and take our children back into our bosoms. Remember, praise is more productive than blame.

I notice, and welcome, an addition to us freelancers who sound off on our own domain specificities with the added bonus of getting paid for it. We write columns. Its not difficult, but its tricky in that were never sure what we cover is relevant. In education, I think the fuss made over matric results is just a media-driven event.

Each child who passes the exam deserves praise, not polemic about statistics that lump all candidates together into one melting pot for the purveyors of polemic and statistics.

One might reach the end of ones school years at matric.

It doesnt follow that we have given the learners anything, what with the cloddish OBE that has been transformed stubbornly and stupidly four times up to now.

George Bernard Shaw is noted for his observation: The time I spent in school interfered with my education.

To arm parents with my Year of the Parent project, I invite suggestions from my readers (how many are we now?) via my e-mail, WhatsApp (which I just love to hate) or telephone.

Im acknowledging that parents are the first teachers. Thats where the important start to education resides. Pundits call it the first epistemic encounter.

Given that we have not yet resolved the mother-tongue issue, I would like to refer to an interview with Makhaya Ntini, one of the best bowlers and most charismatic personalities this country has produced. He recounted his days at a school where only English was spoken. He recalled the terror of not knowing what was being said.

He remembers a white class-mate moving desk to sit next to him. This boy could speak Xhosa and he translated for Makhaya. I wonder whether he instinctively acted out of a premonition of the greatness Makhaya would achieve.

The point of that interview was that peer support is vital. Also, lessons should be child-friendly, or pedocentric, not top-down.

Here are a few interesting little shocks to the system which can flesh out your conversations with your children:

The word Pacific Ocean contains three cs. Each one has a different pronunciation. United means to bring together, yet it is also an anagram for untied, taken apart, separated. The following sentences read the same in English and Afrikaans: My hand is in warm water. My ink is in my pen.

* Literally Yours is a weekly column from Cape Argus reader Alex Tabisher. He can be contacted on email byact[emailprotected]

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.

Cape Argus

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Tips for year of the parent | Cape Argus - Independent Online

Director Bartlett Sher is now working on an opera based on Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, and preparing the London premiere and national tour of To Kill A Mockingbird. He's shown above during a rehearsal in May 2006, in Seattle. Elaine Thompson/AP hide caption

Director Bartlett Sher is now working on an opera based on Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, and preparing the London premiere and national tour of To Kill A Mockingbird. He's shown above during a rehearsal in May 2006, in Seattle.

Theater is a team sport just ask Broadway theater director Bartlett Sher. "I don't believe in individual genius, I believe in collective genius," he says.

That approach has earned Sher a Tony Award and nine Tony Award nominations. As resident director of New York's Lincoln Center Theater, Sher digs deep into American classics To Kill a Mockingbird, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof and makes them feel relevant to today's audiences.

Great coaches need to know every position on the field and theater directors are no different Sher says that's part of the fun. "I have to know as deeply as I can about the lighting, about set design, about clothes and about acting and pull all of them together ... " he explains. "You have to be kind of in everybody's experience and helping them all do the best work they can do without the assumption that you could do it better."

Celia Keenan-Bolger is an actor who has seen Sher's approach firsthand. She played Scout in the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird which Sher directed. In meetings with the cast, she says Sher would "source the room" asking: "Does anybody have a way to explain this that might be more helpful than what I'm using?"

It's a hard balance to strike she says. "Sometimes, if you open up the room too much, it starts to feel like, 'Who's in charge here? Who's running the ship?' But with Bart, there was always a very clear sense that he was in charge, that he had a vision, that we were working towards something, but that he could be greatly influenced by the artists he had surrounded himself with."

Two Broadway shows Sher directed My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof are currently on national tours. The national tour of To Kill a Mockingbird begins this summer.

Sher's With Shaw

Sher recently came down from New York to attend an early preview of My Fair Lady at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center. The following day at rehearsal, he darts around the theater, talking to the choreographer, the sound and lighting technicians, the conductor in the orchestra pit and the actors on stage.

Three suffragettes walk across the stage with protest signs during the song "With A Little Bit of Luck." In the preview, they were in the background and Sher thinks they walked by too fast. "We need to pull them out more because the audience loves them," he says. He asks the three actors to walk to the front of the stage, stop, face the audience, raise their signs and yell: "Vote for women!"

"Be righteous about it," Sher tells them. In the age of #MeToo, he need not say more.

My Fair Lady was inspired by George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, in which Eliza Doolittle, a poor-but-feisty flower girl, dreams of a better life. Along comes the arrogant, class-conscious phonetics professor Henry Higgins to teach or more like torment her to speak the Queen's English. In the final scene of Pygmalion, the newly empowered Eliza has tender feelings for the sexist professor but leaves him end of story. But in the musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, Eliza comes back. In a supposedly crowd-pleasing, happy ending, the dueling couple falls for each other, despite the fact that Henry has treated Eliza horribly throughout the entire show.

Sher's with Shaw on this one: "Shaw hated the idea that they will ever, ever end up together," Sher says. "He was anti rom-com of any kind. He was an incredible feminist, fought hard for all kinds of equality."

In Sher's My Fair Lady, Eliza ditches Henry for that better life she's been dreaming about, far from "Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire."

Shereen Ahmed, who plays Eliza in the national touring company, says she connected to her character's "resilience and ambition."

"As a young Egyptian girl trying to just find her place in society, I was having trouble fitting in and finding my own identity," Ahmed says. "Something about Eliza's determination to better herself ... really resonated."

She says Sher gave her the "space" to "discover" that connection.

With classic productions, Sher tries to understand the context in which the works were created and then bring them into the present day.

"Whenever you do one of these musicals, you have to look at the immediate significance of the time you're in and why are you doing it right now," he says.

A 'Fiddler' For Today

For the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, Sher drew from his own background. Sher's father was born in a shtetl in Lithuania, similar to Tevye's Anatevka. In the opening and closing scenes, Sher made a small but important change: the actor playing Tevye looks like a modern-day tourist, dressed in a parka. He could be Tevye's descendant.

"We looked at that experience of somebody going back to explore their past ... and mix that with the current refugee situation," he explains. The Fiddler revival explores "what it means when you're driven out and who you are and how you survive that."

Yehezkel Lazarov, the Israeli actor who plays Tevye on the national tour, says Sher wants to make sure audiences connect the past with the present.

"He definitely wanted people to understand that we are part of a community," says Lazarov. "Unfortunately [the refugee crisis], it's part of our reality. It's part of our life right now, as we speak. And although Fiddler exists for 60 years already or more, it's still very, very much relevant."

Confidence ... And Chaos

To find out how his shows are being received, Sher talks with audience members during intermission. In New York, they can be brutally honest. He remembers directing a musical version of the Pedro Almodvar film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and ... it didn't go well.

"I remember walking up the aisle and a group of older Lincoln Center women subscribers looking at me and all together turning their thumbs over and down to tell me that it was terrible," Sher says. "And I joyfully went up and said, 'So why are you feeling that?' I got more of an answer than I probably wanted but that's the spirit in New York. And you have to have enough confidence, enough belief in what you're doing, that it's not about whether it's good or bad it's about this sort of thing you're making."

Sher admits it's taken years of practice to develop that confidence. He grew up in San Francisco, one of seven children. No one else in his family worked in the arts but he credits his older brothers with giving him his first theater experience when he was 11 at a Grateful Dead concert.

"They were an improvisational band, so they never knew what number they were going to do next ..." he recalls. "And the audience ... they were connecting into it in a very intense way. So you had this ... kind of spiritual kind of insane experience all at once."

He says both the city and his family made for a lively adolescence. "I had one brother at the Naval Academy and one brother at Stanford," he says. "And the difference between the two, and the politics that were all over, everybody was screaming and yelling. It was fun. I thought the world was pretty crazy and pretty exciting and got to be lucky enough to not have a problem with chaos."

That might be a Broadway theater director's most valuable skill. Sher's "collective genius" credo means lots of research, many deadlines and constant communication with actors, writers, choreographers, lighting and costume designers.

Back at the bustling Kennedy Center rehearsal of My Fair Lady, Sher's passion for his gig is infectious. "The music, the movement, the design, the fact that we're doing a whole film in front of you every night," he says, "Everything delivering, up and down and the coordination of all these elements. It's pretty mind-boggling."

Original post:
Director Bartlett Sher On Chaos, Confidence And 'Collective Genius' - NPR