Misalliance

Written by George Bernard Shaw

Narrated by Roger Rees, Eric Stoltz and Full Cast

Taking place on a single day in May 1909, a self-made millionaire and his family invite their future nobleman-in-law for a visit to their estate in Surrey, England. In this delightfully clever play, issues of gender, class, politics and family are all targets for Shaw’s keen wit.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Tom Beyer, Joy Gregory, Roger Rees, Serena Scott Thomas, W. Morgan Sheppard, Eric Stoltz, Victoria Tennant, Tegan West and Douglas Weston.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.A. Theatre Works
• Release date: May 1, 2005
• ISBN: 9781580814805

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born into a lower-class family in Dublin, Ireland. During his childhood, he developed a love for the arts, especially music and literature. As a young man, he moved to London and found occasional work as a ghostwriter and pianist. Yet, his early literary career was littered with constant rejection. It wasn’t until 1885 that he’d find steady work as a journalist. He continued writing plays and had his first commercial success with Arms and the Man in 1894. This opened the door for other notable works like The Doctor's Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra.

Reviews for Misalliance

[quantum_flapdoodle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quirky play which examines relationships and the consequences of relationships. It gets high marks for the ability to recognize the stifling nature of the role women were forced into prior to the mid-century successes of the women's movement. Also to be valued are the names he has given his characters, names which fit the character so nicely it's like they were born for those names. Downsides are the typical wordiness of Victorian-era authors, which works in some places and not in others. There are definitely times when the long-winded speeches of the characters begin to pall; other times, they flow along smoothly and pull the reader along. The play twits the aristocracy without managing to write them off as totally hopeless, and in fact, his aristocracy in this play come off somewhat better than his wealthy merchant class. It lacks some of the charm of other Shaw works, but is still a solid entry.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this full cast audiobook edition (courtesy of the LATW website) and read along in my Kindle omnibus "The Plays of Shaw". If I hadn't been reading along, I wouldn't have realized that this audiobook edition is slightly abridged. In the end, the difficulty of matching the two editions was too much trouble so I listened to the audio then went back and read the text.I did like the cast of the audiobook and understand why most of the cuts were made but I found the original play funnier (plus, I like Shaw's stage directions & commentary). I would put the written text at 4* while this audiobook edition was only 3.5*.

[devil_llama · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quirky play which examines relationships and the consequences of relationships. It gets high marks for the ability to recognize the stifling nature of the role women were forced into prior to the mid-century successes of the women's movement. Also to be valued are the names he has given his characters, names which fit the character so nicely it's like they were born for those names. Downsides are the typical wordiness of Victorian-era authors, which works in some places and not in others. There are definitely times when the long-winded speeches of the characters begin to pall; other times, they flow along smoothly and pull the reader along. The play twits the aristocracy without managing to write them off as totally hopeless, and in fact, his aristocracy in this play come off somewhat better than his wealthy merchant class. It lacks some of the charm of other Shaw works, but is still a solid entry.