Old Play in Manhattan

Candida remains one of Shaw's most popular plays, partly because it is one of his slickest; by 1894 the iconoclastic G.B.S. had already learned all the oldest tricks of the trade. Along with a sprinkling of Christian socialism, he put into Candida the essence of secretarial infatuation. He made Candida's father a symbol of petty capitalism, and standard low comedy as, well. And Shaw, picturing a happy marriage, made it look like a triangle story, right down to the Big Scene where Candida has to choose between her parson husband and her poet suitor. She chooses the husband on the ground that he is the weaker man who needs her more. She really chooses him, of course, because she loves him.

But all Shaw's tricks went for nothing last week. A Candida in which Hollywood's Olivia de Havilland had been touring crashed down, like a dead weight, on Broadway. The play cruelly showed its age while scarcely suggesting its paternity. The star was not even a bad Candida; she was simply a bewildered Miss de Havilland. And, except for Ron Randell as the parson, the cast pretty much kept her company.

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