Review: SHAW'S SHORTS at Washington Stage Guild

It might be a letdown that the opening welcome to the Washington Stage Guild’s latest production is prerecorded, instead of, say, artistic director Bill Largess bounding on stage for the duty, as he has often done in the past.

Turns out there’s no need for it before “Shaw’s Shorts,” though, an engaging collection of one acts that essentially begins with it own variation of the pre-play opening statement.

In this case, it’s an imagined scene from 1907 shortly after London’s Playhouse Theater reopened after the nearby Charings Cross Station collapse caused its closing. The piece, “Interlude at the Playhouse,” is like the other two well-wrought scenes, are striking both in the freshness and immediacy of George Bernard Shaw’s prose, and how applicable they are to the modern day.

In the case of “Interlude,” it echoed the kind of welcoming back that happened at so many theaters in recent years after the pandemic closed them down for 18 months. 

In this case, though, the wife of the theater manager first appears to warn the audience of her husband’s nervousness and the tedious historical account he has prepared. Then he comes out with his bluster and sheaves of paper that she tries to edit on stage by grabbing several pages.

When she asks the audience her indulgence in cheering him on, they’re happy to play along and clap (so: no need for prerecorded clapping).

The second piece, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets” is snarkier in that Shavian way. His way to mark the tri-centary of Shakespeare’s death in 1916 was to imagine a fictional meeting of the Bard with Queen Elizabeth I. Shakespeare’s intent in the short play is to have her create a national theater (something still not in place 300 years later). What he comes away with are all manner of deathless phrases uttered by the queen that he’d later put in his plays. Every time she says something like “Season your admiration for a while,” he’d furiously scribble it down for later use (in this case, “Hamlet”). Same with the Beefeater who let him in, who dashes off “frailty they name is woman” and the Bard asks him to repeat it.

Eventually, the mysterious Dark Lady of the sonnets, who Shakespeare was ostensibly there to meet, finally shows up, and the two women discuss his shortcomings. 

Following an intermission, the third piece has some of the same satiric humor, but also an underlying weight about the nature of the World War then raging. “O’Flaherty V.C.” concerns the Irish war hero for England who literally became the poster boy for recruitment in Ireland. He’s not exactly proud to be fighting on behalf of the country that’s denied his island’s freedom, but tries all he can to keep it from his mother, who eventually shows up. As with “Dark Lady,” “O’Flaherty” has been produced by the Stage Guild previously, in 2007. 

The underlying anti-war themes of “O’Flaherty V.C.” got banned in its time, making the outspoken Shaw a role model more than a century later for artists speaking truth to power in times of impending oppression. 

Director Laura Giannarelli gets a lot out of her cast of four, with Thomas Daniels managing both a convincing Shakespeare and then the Irish soldier. Even more versatile is Patricia Hurley, who does triple duty as the elegant theater manager’s wife, Queen Elizabeth I and the over-the-top Irish mother. Hurley also gets the most of Costume Designer Emily Vallozzi too, with two notable gowns before the Irish mother invades (the simple set is by Jonathan Dahl Robertson).

Morgan Duncan is a great comic presence throughout, as the self-important but not quite self-aware stage manager, the low key Beefeater, and the British general who is a little shocked to hear how the Irish soldier really feels. And Leah Packer brightens the stage whenever she’s on it in her roles, as the Dark Lady and the soldier’s girlfriend.

“Shaw’s Shorts” is not only entertaining, it helps boost the Washington Stage Guild’s impressive record of producing nearly half of the prolific Shaw’s more than 60 plays. No American theater could have done more. 

Running time: One hour, 45 minutes with one 15-minute intermission. 

Photo credit: Patricia Hurley and Morgan Duncan in “Interlude at the Playhouse.” Photo by DJ Corey Photography. 

“Shaw’s Shorts” by George Bernard Shaw continues through Dec. 15 at the Washington Stage Guild, performing at Undercroft Theatre, 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Tickets available online. 

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