BERNARD SHAW'S LITTLE SATIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 137, 10 June 1911, Page 13

BERNARD SHAW'S LITTLE SATIRE.

A ; "batch of new plays saw the light this week. "Fanny's First Play »at the Little Theatre, was by a dramatist whose name was not disclosed- but there was no secret about it. "Bernard Shaw' was written all over it. In this little jeu d'esprit, Mr. Shaw laughs at himself and his critics. He builds a play within a play, and puts the critics oil the stage to discuss it. In the opinions which he puts into their mouths ho satirises genially their mannerisms and their ideas about Bernard «haw, introducing incidentally some- hearty laughs against himself. ' "

Fanny herself is a Fabian and a Cambridge girl, daughter of an old-fashio:m.d, sentimental, mid-Victorian father. Fanny writes a play and induces her father to have it performed at his country house by real actors, and to invite four eminent dramatic critics down from London to see the play, and give their opinions on it It would take too long to describe Fanny's play, which is intended to he an object-lesson to Fanny's father in the bringing-up of children. It deals with the. adventures of two highspirited young people, who horrify their intensely respectable parents by getting locked up for disorderly behaviour in very compromising company on boat-race night. Apparently this is a reaction from a home-life that is too "respectable." and too formally religious. There are long tirades in the best Shaw vein, and the strange little farce goes with, plenty oE humour.

At the end of tho play the critics discuss it with the agitated father, who ha 3 recognised the lesson was meant for him. Mr. Trotter (a caricature of A. H. Walkley, of the "Times") thinks "any clever modern girl could turn out that*s.ind of thing by the yard." Mr. Ounn (Gilbert C'annan, of the "Star") considers tho play tho "most ordinary sort of oldfashioned Ibsenite drivel." Pannel does not see how you can judge a play unless you know the name of the author. You do not write in the same way of a Pinero and a Jones play. Vaughan (E. A. Banghan, of the "Daily News") does not think "Fanny's First Play" is by Shaw, because there is some feeling in it, and he has often remarked that Shaw is physiologically incapable of writing of feeling. Eventually the producer of the play cuts short the critics by remarking that at any rate they can praise tho actors. And, indeed, the little play was admirably acted.