Unisex in Embryo

By T.E.K.

THE PHILANDERER by GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Attending Manhattan's Roundabout Theater is a little bit like rummaging in the attic of Grandmother's house. The dramatic curios presented during the eleven years of this theater's existence have sometimes been dusty, archaic, erratic and slight, but almost in variably fascinating. The Roundabout has developed a reputation for being the place to see plays that one would never get a chance to see otherwise.

The Philanderer is no exception. It is Shaw's second play, and has apparently not been staged in New York for 62 years. If Shaw's reputation depended on it, woe to Shaw, yet the play is an intriguing precursor of subsequent at tempts to foster equality between the sexes. Much of the action takes place in an implausibly gender-desegregated private club (the year is 1893) called the Ibsen Club, in which women members pre-empt the smoking room and the rules require that men be not overly manly--unisex in embryo. Of course, Shaw foisted on Ibsen a militant pro-feminist stance that was strictly Shaw's, but his quips on the subject have a prescient modernity. The piddling plot concerns a flirtatious chap (Donald Madden) who captures the hearts of two ladies (Cara Duff-MacCormick and Marion Lines) but cunningly evades the altar. The sturdy proficiency of all the players and of the director, Stephen Hollis, makes a raft of comedy out of a matchstick drama.

T.E.K.

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