George Bernard Shaw's 'MISALLIANCE' Runs Now thru 2/22 at Walnut Street Theatre

George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance: "A Cavalcade of Ideas Wrapped Around a Full Portion of Wit" will run tonight, January 28 through February 22, 2015 at Walnut Street Theatre's Studio 5.

Nobel and Oscar winner George Bernard Shaw was blessed with a knack for folding humor into serious examinations of topics including marriage, religion, government, classism, education and parent-child relationships. In his 1909-1910 comedy Misalliance, he looks to unsuitable romantic unions as the blooming centerpiece for his fully-loaded table of ideas.

The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, a Philadelphia-based theater company best-known for illuminating, challenging and humorous interpretations of absurdist-leaning plays will present Shaw's rarely-produced comedy, subtitled "A Debate in One Sitting" as the first show of their 9th season.

Misalliance will preview at The Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut Street, Wednesday, January 28 and Thursday, January 29 @ 7:30 pm. Misalliance opens Friday, January 30, 2015 @ 7:30 pm and runs through Sunday, February 22 with Wednesday through Saturday performances at 7:30 pm and Sunday performances @ 2:30 pm. Tickets are $20 Wednesday and Thursday and $22 Friday through Sunday, and are available online at http://misalliance.bpt.me, or by calling 215-285-0472. Student, senior and group discounts are available.

Misalliance performers include Philadelphia favorite David Bardeen playing underwear magnate John Tarleton, along with IRC stalwarts David Stanger (Ionesco's Rhinoceros; Franz Kafka's The Castle; Nikolai Gogol's Marriage), Andrew Carroll (Jean Giraudoux's Ondine), Langston Darby (A Streetcar Named Durang), John D'Alonzo (Kafka's The Castle), Kate Graham (A Streetcar Named Durang), Paul McElwee (Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros) and Kristen Norine (A Streetcar Named Durang), joined by IRC newcomer Emily Schuman.

This Philadelphia premiere will feature the talents of set designer Anna Kiraly (Kafka's The Castle, Charles Mee's Paradise Park, Nikolai Gogol's Marriage) and costume designer Janus Stefanowicz, joined by lighting designer Andrew Cowles and sound designer Adam Vidiksis.

Shaw wrote in the preface to Misalliance, "A new sort of laziness will become the bugbear of society: the laziness that refuses to face the mental toil and adventure of making work by inventing new ideas or extending the domain of knowledge, and insists on a ready-made routine."

Misalliance is considered one of Shaw's "discussion" plays, a dramatic genre introduced and perfected by the playwright. Shaw has been praised and criticized for his emphasis on dialogue (discussion) over plot and action. It was Shaw's premise that "ideas can be as dramatic as love-making or murder on the stage; for action to be dramatic, it need not be overt." Shaw was a playwright with a purpose. Even though he was among the first to seek a wider audience for his plays by publishing them for a reading and viewing public, admirers and detractors alike understand Shaw's keen knowledge stage and dramatic action, as well as his wit and fine sense of comedy. His plays usually carried several messages, most often stemming from his quarrel with the ills wrought by capitalism and his fervor for socialism. His best plays reveal that discussion between characters can evoke dramatic tension as effectively as plot complications and conflicts.

George Bernard Shaw's literary career spanned the first half of the twentieth century; his first play, Widower's House, was written in 1892, his last, Shakes Versus Shaw, in 1949, a year before his death in 1950 at the age of 94. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. Although born in Ireland, Shaw spent most of his adult life in England, and a majority of his work was produced on the English stage. His best-known plays continue to be widely performed: Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Pygmalion (from which the highly successful My Fair Lady was adapted), and St. Joan. The less well-known Misalliance falls chronologically in the middle. Pygmalion was made into a film twice, and his screenplay won an Oscar.

2015 marks The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's ninth season presenting challenging and rarely-produced absurdist gems from authors around the globe. In 2014, The IRC season included critically-acclaimed sold-out productions of French playwright Jean Giraudoux's Ondine and father of absurdism Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros.

Misalliance will operate under a contract with Actors' Equity Association. The IRC is a 501C3 non-profit organization, and a member of The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and a participant in the Barrymore Awards, a program of Theatre Philadelphia. The IRC's 2015 season is funded in part by generous grants from Wyncote Foundation, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, The Samuel S. Fels Fund; The Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts program of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency with support also provided by PECO and administered regionally by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance; Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia; The Charlotte Cushman Foundation and Plannerzone. www.idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org

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