(This
article was published in SHAW 31, 234-252)
“SHAW’S
CORNER” AS A THEATRE
By
Richard Farr Dietrich[i]
ACT
I: FOUNDATIONS AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT
When Shaw’s death in 1950 led to “Shaw’s Corner” in
Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire (a small village near St. Albans just north of
London), going to the National Trust, the question was what use could be made
of this country retreat? The house was
not all that impressive in its architecture and atmosphere, it was in a
somewhat difficult-to-reach part of England, and this came at a time when
England was still in recovery mode after WWII. Add to this that key members of
the NT Board, such as Harold Nicolson, were not convinced Shaw would last and
so questioned taking on this property. The fullest account of what happened in
the early years of the NT’s managing of this property is perhaps to be found in
Volume 4 of Michael Holroyd’s biography of Shaw, The Last Laugh, and an often laughable story it is of how things
did not turn out as expected, beginning with the disappointment of F. E.
Loewenstein, Shaw’s bibliographer and founder of the Shaw Society in 1941, that
he was not given the house to live in and conduct as a shrine to The Great Man.
Frustrating Loewenstein, the NT appointed Shaw’s housekeeper, Alice Laden, as
the first “custodian,” but Shaw’s ghost so spooked her she didn’t last long.
Matters had been made worse by Shaw’s offer to provide an endowment being
dismissed as unnecessary by some NT official (according to some in the Shaw
Society who at the time attested in the Shaw
Bulletin of Dec. 1952 to what cannot be found in Shaw’s will), and then
Shaw’s dispersing of his wealth to so many worthy causes (mostly unquestioned
except for “alfabet reform”) that there was little
left over for the property’s upkeep except saleable artifacts. And so to pay the bills the NT, rather
neglecting the museum potential of the place after the initial enthusiasm for visiting
it wore off and Loewenstein had given up his claim to it, for many years let
out the house and/or garden for private use (Shaw had suggested as much in his
will) but apparently mostly to people who were given a break on the rent if
they opened part of the downstairs to paying visitors for a few hours a week
for the viewing of Shavian artifacts (the first professional, salaried house
manager not being in place until 1997).
It seems that many of the Shaws’ furnishings and other effects,
especially from the upstairs where the custodians mostly lived, had been put in
storage early on, and several decades passed before the NT seriously pursued
the idea of making money on the property as a dedicated Shaw museum and theatre
(and eventually it did make money in the 21st C., but profits in the
20th C. apparently occurred only in the first few years after Shaw’s
death and then went into the general regional fund). The NT did not officially promote the
birthday tributes at first, some of the early “custodians” finding them rather
annoying, in fact, and the village was actually in an uproar over how visitors
were ruining their idyllic countryside.
So it was only the dedication and perseverance of the Shaw Society in
its making of annual pilgrimages from London, beginning in 1952, to celebrate
Shaw’s birthday with readings from Shaw’s works (with Eric Batson, the
Society’s secretary, initially leading the trek and doing the readings), that
eventually persuaded the NT to promote and market the event.
This occurred as well because, roughly concurrent
with the development of the museum (although it’s not called a museum) and the
return of some of the stored items, the readings evolved, in the 60s, 70s, and
80s, into productions of entire plays, and the Shaws’ large, attractive
backyard became, on special occasions, an open air theatre. 1961 is the date given in The Shavian as when they began to speak
of a “Shaw Festival” occurring there (but 1960 may be the correct date, as the
Appendix suggests), and rather small, exclusive parties, sometimes tented, were
gradually replaced by larger audiences gathering in the open. At some point a
logical connection was made between the doing of Shaw’s plays outdoors and the
audience’s enjoying a bring-your-own, pre-play picnic on this wonderful sward
of green, even though that meant expenditure for a car park, porta-potties, etc. The many National Trust house managers
and volunteers who have presided over this weekend event, disregarding of the
ghost of teetotaler Shaw, have made a point of also providing a large
receptacle for the numerous wine and beer bottles the picnicking audience
unloads at the end of each production!
To which my wife and I generously contributed when visiting in 2006, on
the occasion of Shaw’s 150th birthday, a visit that inspired this
article.
With the eventual cooperation of the NT (which
varied from custodian to custodian) and the initiative of the Shaw Society of
England, then, a number of producers, directors, theatre managers, and actors,
many of whom have been members if not officers of the Society, have over the
years provided a throng of summer picnickers on the Shaws’ lawn with suitable
and often delightful productions, mostly by or about Shaw, although
occasionally a play by one of Shaw’s contemporaries or an English classic found
its way in, and often this has been preceded by entertaining talks or readings.
This has been successful enough that almost 60 years later they’re still doing
it, typically these days with productions in mid-June and late July (the latter
on or near Shaw’s birthday, July 26), in what constitutes the only Shaw
Festival in the U.K and Ireland since the closing of the original Malvern
Festival.
Shaw’s plays were generally thought strictly for
indoors on proscenium arch stages until the productions at “Shaw’s Corner”
began, but now it’s clear that they play well in the outdoors as well, with
some costuming but otherwise minimal staging.
There have been many variations in where the stage is placed in relation
to the audience, but in the most frequent use of this open air theatre (as in
the photo at the top), the stage’s “back wall” is the back of Shaw’s house,
“the wall at stage right” being Shaw’s orchard and garden (with a car park
beyond), “the wall at stage left” being the hedge by the road into Ayot, and
“the stage” being the narrow gravel walkway along the back of the house. In this setup, Shaw’s house looms over the
actors like the scena
did in the ancient Greek theatre, acting as a sound projector, but with as few
places for entrances and exits.
Typically, the door on the left
below is the only door the custodians allow Eliza Doolittle
and
the other characters of this Pygmalion
to use, chary of damage to the fragile pieces
in
Charlotte’s sitting room through the door on the right.
Also echoing of Greek theatre was the return, for
the June play in 1993-95, to the early reversing of the audience and stage
relationship so that an enlarged “stage” was on the sloping lawn below, with
trees and shrubbery behind, and the audience was seated in roughly an
amphitheatre arrangement from the house on down the slope. The view of the English countryside from
there is spectacular, another thing that evokes Greek theatres, which never spared
the scenery. But when the audiences
started getting larger, it was necessary to move back to the stage at the back
of the house, which had better sound projection anyway. Another experiment in June of 1996, putting
the “stage” at the back of the house but in front of the gravel walkway in a
large rectangle didn’t work all that well either, as it put the actors on
roughly the same level as the audience.
So in 1997 the June play went back up to the gravel walkway, and there
it has remained, except for one other experiment that the devil made them do.
Apparently echoing an earlier experiment with the
same play, one small variation that looked good and played well but that upset
some of the audience occurred when, for a birthday play, the stage was moved,
for just one scene, to around the large cedar tree stage left of the house
(planted years before by the Shaw Society), so that the serpent in Back to Methuselah would have a real
tree from which to whisper in Eve’s ear.
As this involved the audience having to move around, causing front-row
sitters to lose their privileged view, there were naturally complaints that
give pause to anyone contemplating this devilish deviation again.
In the first configuration, with the audience facing
the house, I can testify that the acoustics are surprisingly good, better than
some West End theatres, but perhaps the actors go out of their way here to make
themselves heard and perhaps there was less wind on our visit to blow the
actors’ words around. As for the
minimalist staging, it’s reported that audiences find sufficient staging cues
embedded in the dialogue so that, for example, when Raina’s
bedroom candle repeatedly blows out in Arms
and the Man, audiences relish imagining it from the spoken cues. Shaw’s words seem to provide theatre enough.
One hazard of any open air theatre, of course, is
unpredictable weather, and this theatre has endured its share, although
generally blessed with decent weather, according to The Shavian. There are
reports of the actors and the audience almost disappearing from each other’s
view due to pouring rain, of actresses’ Victorian/Edwardian dresses subjected
to “rising damp” from the ground up, and of actors sliding down into
picnics. One production of The Philanderer had to be canceled, to
the consternation of a typically doughty British audience well used to rains on
their parades, because expensive furniture on that walkway stage was threatened
with drenching. An argument for
dispensing with expensive furniture altogether!
With open air production also comes all the activity
of animal nature, with, on one occasion, a partridge nesting at the bottom of a
house wall creeper attacking the lovely hats of the women of Heartbreak House, with Socks the
neighborhood cat strolling through scenes at will but solving the partridge
problem with full-scale attacks, and with necessary, recorded sound effects
such as the explosions in Too True To Be
Good causing startled birds to go screeching over the twice-startled
audience. The audiences reportedly love
all but the soaking, and, too, they can usually be counted on for appropriate
responses to timely dialogue, as when in the 2008 Millionairess, in the midst of a global financial crisis, lines
like “oh don’t put your money in a bank” brought great rounds of deeply felt
applause. Such “interactive art,” as we
now term it, seems to more than make up for the occasional rainy day.
However, while the audience may love most of these
happenstances, it’s said that the locals are somewhat less in love with this
theatre in general and its noisier happenstances in particular. The automobile traffic on play day alone, on
these narrow country roads, is enough to rile this very quiet but upscale
neighborhood, with its Tudored homes and pricey
cottages, and the Horseback Hall contingent is probably not too happy with the
content of the plays as well. But
reportedly efforts are being made to engage the locals more and get them to be
more supportive. We’ll hope for
that.
Although
“Shaw’s Corner Open Air Theatre,” as we might call it, started, in the early
years, with just a one-day talk on Shaw or a reading of passages from Shaw’s
prose or a single act from one of Shaw's plays, presented by the Shaw Society
on the week-end nearest to Shaw's birthday (a Society, by the way, well stocked
with professional actors ready to volunteer and well-practiced in performing
Shaw at Shaw Society meetings in London as well as in the West End and on
tour), this grew over the years to productions of full length plays, with as
many as nine performances on three summer weekends but more likely six
performances on two weekends, sometimes by professional groups, sometimes by
drama students, and sometimes by a mix, but always with the Shaw Society as the
principal initiator until the NT took a larger role in 2001-2 (see a list of
productions in the Appendix at the end).[ii]
When Ellen Pollock (left), a great
comic actress who had been directed by Shaw in the 30s and was famous for her playing
of Eliza Doolittle during WWII, not to mention her many Shaw productions and
long list of films and plays by other authors to her credit as well, became the
president of the Society in 1958 upon the death of Esmé Percy, she as an acting
teacher often had students from her London school complementing professional
actors, including herself. And sometimes she would “dine alone,” so to speak.
Ellen’s most favored bit was the tea party scene from Pygmalion in which she played, hilariously it’s said, all the parts. And so this theatre began, more impromptu and
volunteer than not at first but leaning towards fuller and more professional
productions of the plays.
3
ACT II: “AYOT PRODUCTIONS:” GETTING
MORE PROFESSIONAL
There
seems to have been a brief discontinuance of the birthday tributes in 1974-5,
but they resumed thereafter with Ellen Pollock still doing readings and others
engaged as well, with mentionings in The
Shavian of Robert Henderson of “Studio 68 of Theatre Arts” directing some
of the plays from 1971 until about 1985, and then Charles Duff from the London
Theatre School doing some productions.
Unfortunately, there are not many alive today who remember these
productions, and not all that much was said about them in The Shavian, and so we move on.
The names of famous jazz musician and well known radio
personality Benny Green and his wife and actress Toni Kanal
begin to appear in The Shavian notes
about Ayot productions from about 1980, along with Ellen Pollock, and it seems
by 1987 Green and Kanal (below) were involved in most
of the productions, with Benny, alone or with Toni and/or Ellen, doing an
amusing pre-play talk on Shavian themes, with play to follow. Benny specialized in the musicals Shaw
inspired, having composed two himself, Bashville and Valentine’s Day. Toni Kanal formed
an acting company in 1992 called “Ayot Productions,” which was joined in by
renowned Shaw director Richard Digby Day (left), and
this combo then provided “The Birthday Play” through 2003. Toni recounts how in the days
when she was doing both pre-play and play she found herself rehearsing with
actors at her house for days at a time, feeding them, doing laundry, driving
the van with props and scenery, and being, in short, the general factotum that
seems to go along with being a producer/director, but mostly to her great
enjoyment. Her production partner, Richard Digby Day, who has directed more plays by
Shaw than probably any other director in the U.K., came from many years as
director of the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, London, and thus was well
prepared for most of the difficulties at the open air theatre at “Shaw’s
Corner.”
Benny
Green and Toni Kanal Green
But, after ten years, there were some
frustrations that Richard and Toni found insuperable, which eventually led to
“Ayot Productions” giving up the birthday play after 2003 when a dispute with
the National Trust could not be resolved.
Both sides in this dispute can make a good case. For a few examples of matters disputed, Ayot
Productions understandably wanted to have conditions more conducive to
theatrical production, such as from adding a temporary thrust stage to enhance
the depth of the stage, but of course, while granting the point, the NT, doubtless
under budget constraints, saw the expense as cutting in to profits necessary to
the maintenance of the estate, profits that have never been more than marginal
even in years when there were profits
(the NT, by the way, is a private charity, independent of the government, and
so can’t count on subsidies). Or when it
was proposed that tours at other Trust houses be booked so that actors could be
employed for longer runs, it again was granted that this was desirable, but the
fear was that audiences at houses having nothing to do with Shaw would be so
small that a loss would be incurred. And
so one can go endlessly back and forth, making valid points on both sides of
the argument, the theatre artisans arguing that short-term investment in
improvements would lead to long-term gains, the NT pointing out that the Shaw
house does not operate in a vacuum, its being part of a larger consortium of
houses that the National Trust regional office has to factor in to annual
budget balancing.
In short, this is an ancient dispute
in all theatre management, not resolvable here, and what matters for this
account is that at least by now
professional companies were being booked for this theatre, and production
standards were raised. By the 90s this
theatre is looking more like a real theatre, with much of the credit going to
Ayot Productions--that is, insofar as an open air theatre can be considered “a
real theatre” in an age dominated by the indoor theatre. But the Greeks would understand.
.
ACT III: “MICHAEL FRIEND PRODUCTIONS:” PRESENT AND FUTURE
Eventually Michael Friend, next in line to produce the birthday plays,
found an answer to the problem of extending the run, but first we need to step
back in time to review some developments that led to “Michael Friend
Productions” taking over the birthday play in 2004.
A major change in the use of the open
air theatre occurred in 1991 when the Ayot theatre season was expanded into
June. At the request of the NT, in mid-June
of that year Malcolm Wroe produced two one-man shows, both written by Neil Titley,
one about Shaw called “Shaw’s Corner” that Malcolm acted and another on Oscar
Wilde that Neil Titley acted. In the following June Malcolm, despite
being hospitalized, produced Richard Huggett’s The First Night of Pygmalion.
Malcolm Wroe (in the stripes) with
Alan Knight at the RADA celebration of Shaw’s 150th Birthday.
Due
to illness Malcolm then asked Michael Friend to present something there in June
of 1993. Besides having worked with
Michael in the mid-70s on the long-running South African musical "Ipi Tombi," Malcolm
knew Michael as someone who had some Shavian background, such as in being
Company Manager for the Royal Shakespeare Company in its 1977 attempt to revive
the Malvern Festival with Man and
Superman. In that 1993 debut in
the June slot at
“Shaw’s Corner,” although asked to present something about
Shaw such as Dear Liar, Michael found
himself having to shift grounds at the last minute when rights for that play
were suddenly withdrawn, and he hurriedly prepared the “Don Juan in Hell” scene
from Man and Superman instead. Malcolm recovered from his illness
for the June production in 1994, playing in Too
True to be Good, including on a trip to Prague where “Michael Friend
Productions” gave the Czech premiere of the play. In 1995 Malcolm became
seriously ill, had to give up acting, and stopped being associated directly
with the shows. Happily, he is doing
quite well these days, and above is suitably attired as Master of Ceremonies
for the 2006 RADA birthday dinner in Shaw’s honor.
From
1993 on to the present, then, “Michael Friend Productions” presented a mid-June
play, which became known as “The Summer Play,” while “Ayot Productions” presented
“The Birthday Play” in late July for The Shaw Society. When, in 2004, Ayot Productions decided not
to continue with the July play, the consequence of disputes with the National
Trust noted above, Michael Friend was asked by the NT to do both the June and
the July play. Previously, in 1998-99,
he had been asked to produce what was called “The Middle Play” in late June or
early July, so he was prepared to do a second play. One major new development that came with
Michael Friend’s taking over was some success at extending the run of the play
through the touring of the plays in regional theatres likely to be more
receptive to Shaw than other Trust houses, which made this more of a paying
proposition for both actors and producer/director.
Below is Michael Friend’s 2006 production, on the
occasion of Shaw’s 150th birthday,
of
Robert Shearman’s Shaw Cornered,
starring Hayward Morse as Shaw.
From 1993 on, then, it has been “Michael Friend
Productions” that has provided at least one, if not both, of the two plays at
“Shaw’s Corner,” with touring productions at other times and other venues as
well, and the story of this, combined with that of its antecedents, is so
illustrative of one significant dimension of Shaw’s presence in the modern
world that it deserves to be better known and preserved as both a record of the
times and as an element in the history of the theatre. And its central figure
in its most recent manifestation, Michael Friend, deserves acknowledgment for
his considerable accomplishment, although, as he acknowledges, he is standing on the shoulders of precursors.
This is not the easiest theatre to produce plays in,
but just as Digby Day’s experience as director of the
Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park came in handy when doing the Ayot productions,
so too Michael’s past has well schooled him for this unique challenge. As he is in many ways typical of the
theatrical warhorses who have ventured into this unlikely theatre and made it
friendly and welcoming to its audiences, I think concluding with the story of
his career as he built towards this is instructive. No doubt an account of the careers of other
producers who preceded him would also be instructive, but he’s the one who’s
doing this now and most likely to do so for the immediate future. So here’s the interesting path Michael Friend
took to qualify for the Ayot theatre.
This is what it takes!
Left,
Michael Friend reading Shaw
It seems the demons that lead one to a life in the
theatre are often either inherited or are a desperate device to escape an
inheritance (of staid and boring middle class propriety?). A mix may have been the case with Michael
Friend, as he descended from a grandfather and father who spiced up otherwise
conventional lives by participating in amateur productions known as “Drawing
Room Entertainments” in Hackney and Birmingham, and, in the case of his father,
taking a part in a comedy show called “The Whizzbangs”
which gave the troops a welcome respite from trench warfare in World War
I. Additional color is added to this
tradition with the old family story that upon returning home from a theatrical
performance one night, grandfather Richard Friend was stopped by the police who
were searching for Jack the Ripper, known to carry a bag similar to the leather
Gladstone bag containing make-up carried by the amateur actor, in perhaps his
most thrilling performance!
Michael was born in Hull, East Yorkshire, in 1934,
and when his father died before Michael was ten, he and his mother moved around
until settling in Bournemouth on the South Coast. He takes it as fateful that
his first role in a school play was as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, “excellent training for a future theatrical
manager,” he says. But there was a long,
crazy road on the way to that, first through art school, acting school at RADA,
and a job as Stage Manager in one of that now lost breed of weekly reps that
turned out play after play, of all kinds (including Shaw), all with six days
rehearsal, with Michael serving as carpenter, electrician, and lighting
designer as well, while filling in with small parts, the best theatre school of
all perhaps.
Then came a fascinating year at the Royal Court
Theatre in London during the second season of the English Stage Company, famous
for classic productions of Look Back in
Anger and The Chairs that year
and of course famous too for the formative Granville Barker years when Shaw’s
plays were its bellwether. This was
followed by a year of weekly rep at the Guildford Theatre and then jobs as
Stage Manager and Company Manager at a number of regional theatres, such as the
Liverpool Playhouse and Bristol Old Vic, where he experienced the luxury of two
and half weeks for rehearsal. And
perhaps set up the current touring of Ayot Shaw plays.
Back in London in the early sixties,
Michael worked at the Mermaid Theatre and in a number of West End theatres
until finally his first significant opportunity to direct came along in a
British Council venture that provided classic English plays for an audience of
foreign students studying in London.
This somehow led to what seemed to be his sidetracking into opera stage
management, initially working for Benjamin Britten at the 1967 Aldeborough
Festival, which included a memorable visit to Expo 67 in Montreal with a
repertoire of six difference operas. This was followed by several years with
the Phoenix Opera, the New Opera Company, and the Welsh National Opera. But perhaps this served him well when he took
to doing a dramatist who was known for his operatic playwriting! [“This is comic opera,” Granville Barker told
his actors when directing Shaw’s plays].
In the mid-70s Michael returned to drama with fifteen years of West End
runs and No. 1 touring companies, including that unsuccessful attempt to revive
the Malvern Shaw Festival mentioned above.
In 1992 he decided it was then or never for the establishment of his own
company, and so “Michael Friend Productions” was born. See www.mfp.org.uk
for more of the details.[iii]
Along the way Michael gradually
connected with the intriguing Shaw, from the reading of his father’s collection
of Shaw’s plays to listening to radio broadcasts and, from RADA days on, acting
in or more likely stage managing the likes of Major Barbara, Heartbreak
House, Man and Superman, and a
number of others. The big breakthrough
at Ayot came just after his establishing Michael Friend Productions, when, as
said, in 1993 Malcolm Wroe, who had done “Shaw’s Corner” shows in June of 1991
and 1992, extended through the NT the invitation to Michael that led to the
“Don Juan in Hell” production, which launched a series of Michael Friend June
productions that has continued for eighteen straight years. In 2004 he was asked to take over the July
birthday performance as well when Ayot Productions decided not to continue, and
from that time on he has staged at least two summer productions, sometimes both
being Shaw plays but at least more Shaw than not over the years.
My wife and I were personally privileged to see Michael’s
heroic 2006 production of Back to
Methuselah, two acts at Ayot and the rest at the Theatre Museum in Covent
Garden, London, in which Hayward Morse starred in a variety of roles. The production at Ayot demonstrated what an
exciting and apt venue this was for theatre performance, narrow stage,
inclement weather, and all.
Gamboling
youth in the final act of Back to
Methuselah.
In the Appendix
at the end is a list of all the birthday plays done at “Shaw’s Corner” in Ayot
St. Lawrence, followed by a list of June plays, done mostly by Michael Friend
Productions, and a list of “Middle” plays. One or two of Friend’s
productions were performed only at Ayot, but most of them went on tour.
To start with, in 1993 they gave just one performance of a June play at Ayot,
which increased to two performances in 1996, and then to three from
1997. In 1998 Michael was invited
to do a second play, in early July or late June, called “The Middle Play,” with
Ayot Productions doing the birthday play in late July, but after two years the
National Trust decided that it was too great a strain on the volunteers to ask
them to work three weekends, so he reverted to one play a year - with the
exception of the single premier performance of Robert Shearman's Shaw
Cornered in 2001 - until he took over the late July slot in 2004 and then
did two a year.
These lists are quite impressive in their range and
scope, and it testifies to not only the Shaw Society’s perseverance and
dedication but also the willingness of non-members, by far the majority of the
audience, to come for a look at Shaw.
From the appreciativeness that we heard all around from the audience, I
feel confirmed in my belief that London’s strange neglect of Shaw in its
theatres is not soundly based. At any
rate, if you’re ever in the area, please don’t miss this amazing and unique
theatre, Shaw’s Corner Open Air Theatre.
Below, Michael Friend’s “office” while in Ayot St.
Lawrence, and doubtless the “office” of many other producers, directors, and
actors over the years, is the Brocket Arms, just up the road from “Shaw’s
Corner,” whose door Shaw may have darkened occasionally but surely not its beer
pulls. Lord Brocket was a friend of
Shaw’s and some of their correspondence can be found in Dan 
H.
Laurence’s Collected Letters. We had the front room right over the pub!
APPENDIX
A. THE BIRTHDAY PLAYS: Although there
were readings from and talks on Shaw from 1952 on to celebrate his birthday,
following is a list of all the official birthday productions of Shaw’s plays at
Shaw’s Corner from 1960 on, when there begins to be reference to a “Shaw
Festival,” with Ayot Productions starting in 1992 and Michael Friend
Productions starting in 2004:
1960
Back to Methuselah (Act 1 reading)
1961
Dark Lady of the Sonnets – The Shaw Society journal, The
Shavian, dates the beginning of “The Shaw Festival” from this production.
1962
Village Wooing
1963
You Never Can Tell (Act 11)
1964
Back to Methuselah (Act 1)
1965
Too True to Be Good
1966
Village Wooing
1967
Scenes from Saint Joan, Candida, On the Rocks and The
Apple Cart
1968
Fanny’s First Play
1969
Mrs Warren’s Profession (part), Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet
1970
Androcles and the Lion
1971
Pygmalion (part)
and Overruled
1972
O’Flaherty, V.C. and Dark Lady of the Sonnets
1973
Back to Methuselah (Act 1) and How He Lied to Her
Husband
1974
Nothing Done
1975
Nothing Done
1976
Glimpse of Reality and Overruled
1977
Annajanska (oration), Caesar and Cleopatra
(Act 1), Apple Cart (interlude)
1978
Androcles and the Lion
1979
Overruled, The Inca of Perusalem and scenes from Mrs Warren’s Profession
1980
Far Fetched Fables and Great Catherine
1981
How He Lied to Her Husband and Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress
1982
“Five Brown
Paper Parcels” and The Six of Calais
1983
Poison, Passion and Petrifaction
1984
Androcles and the Lion
1985
The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet
1986
Arms and the Man (without first act)
1987
Widowers Houses
1988
Major Barbara
1989
Annajanska, the Boshevik Empress and Great
Catherine
1990
Candida
1991
Man of Destiny and How He Lied to Her Husband
1992
O’Flaherty, V.C. and Overruled. Ayot Productions from here until 2004.
1993
Jitta’s Atonement
1994
The Music Cure and Back to Methuselah Acts 1
& 2 (Pt 1)
1995
Candida
1996
How He Lied to Her Husband & Village Wooing
1997
The Philanderer
1998
Widowers Houses
1999
The Glimpse of Reality, The Fascinating Foundling
& J M Barrie’s The Twelve Pound Look
2000 The
Inca of Perusalem and Why She Would
Not
2001 The
Man of Destiny and Rosalind by JM
Barrie
2002 O’Flaherty
VC, The Gaolgate by
Augusta Gregory, The Shadow of the Glen
by JM
Synge
2003 Don
Juan in Hell from Man and Superman
and Dave by Lady Gregory – Ayot
Production
2004
Birthday Tribute: Musical Event, organized by the National Trust. Michael Friend Production’s The Devil's Disciple in late
June
was the only “Birthday Play” not done in July.
Michael Friend Productions from here on.
2005 Misalliance
2006 Back
to Methuselah Part 1 & Shaw
Cornered in early July; Back to
Methuselah Part 2 with Shaw Cornered in
late July
2007
Mrs Warren’s Profession
2008 The Millionairess
2009 Arms and the Man
2010 Widowers' Houses
B. THE SUMMER PLAYS: Following is a
list of the mostly June productions (usually mid-June) at “Shaw’s Corner,” launched
by Malcolm Wroe in 1991 but done by Michael Friend Productions from 1993 on:
1991
– One-person plays on Shaw and Wilde by Neil Titley,
produced by Malcolm Wroe
1992
– Richard Huggett’s The First Night of Pygmalion,
produced by Malcolm Wroe
1993 -- On the Celestial
Omnibus (by Donald Sutherland, the then treasurer of the Shaw
Society) and Don Juan in Hell
1994 -- Too True to be Good
1995 -- You Never Can Tell
1996 -- Mrs
Warren's Profession
1997 -- Heartbreak House
1998 -- Pygmalion
1999 -- Major Barbara
2000 -- Overruled in a double bill with Private
Lives (Coward)
2001 -- Man and
Superman and Shaw Cornered which was commissioned from Robert Shearman
2002 -- Arms and the Man
2003 -- Saint Joan
2004 -- The
Apple Cart in late May was the only “Summer Play” not done in June..
2005 -- Pygmalion
2006 -- Candida
2007 -- She
Stoops to Conquer
2008 -- The
Importance of Being Earnest
2009 -- Saint Joan
2010 -- You Never Can Tell
C. THE MIDDLE PLAYS: Following is a
list of plays done in late June or early July,
done by Michael
Friend Productions between The Summer Play and The Birthday Play:
1998
– The Importance of Being Earnest
(Oscar Wilde)
1999
– Charley’s Aunt (Brandon Thomas)