Paul Miller’s bracing first season at the Orange Tree now brings us a rare revival of Shaw’s first play. Although the plotting is sometimes clumsy, it is fascinating to see Shaw in 1892 using all the tricks of the dramatist’s trade to launch a withering attack on the ethics of individualism. Along with Jack Thorne’s Hope at the Royal Court, it stands out as one of the few genuinely socialist plays to be seen on the current stage.
Shaw’s play begins as romantic comedy. In the course of a Rhineland holiday, a young doctor, Harry Trench, falls impetuously in love with the hot-tempered Blanche Sartorius. But the play really gets down to business with Trench’s realisation that his prospective bride’s income derives from her father’s profits as a slum landlord. In a conventional comedy, the young couple would renounce tainted money and live happily ever after: Shaw, however, uses Trench’s discovery to open up a debate about the ruthless exploitation of the poor and to suggest that even high-minded idealists may be complicit in a corrupt system.
Social conditions have improved since the 1890s, but Rhiannon Lucy Coslett forcefully argues in a programme note that Britain is still in thrall to profiteering private landlords. Sartorius’s claim that the poor cannot be helped, “however much you may sympathise with them”, also strikes a chillingly topical note in today’s climate. But Shaw’s skill, even at this early stage, lies in his ability to attack the system without turning its proponents into outright villains. Sartorius himself is the suavest of apologists for unfettered capitalism and Blanche a sign of Shaw’s lifelong fascination with overpowering, strong-willed women.
Given Shaw’s deliberate avoidance of melodrama, Miller’s production occasionally pushes the play too far in that direction. Simon Gregor, in particular, is encouraged to play Sartorius’s rent collector, Lickcheese, as a demonic, Dickensian figure. But Patrick Drury rightly and excellently plays Sartorius from his own point of view as a man powerless to alter the state of society. There is lively support from Alex Waldmann as the culpably naive Trench, Stefan Adegbola as his parasitic travelling companion and Rebecca Collingwood as the embattled Blanche, who suggests Strindberg’s Miss Julie translated to the London suburbs.
Shaw went on to write greater plays, but it is invigorating to see him confronting audiences with the ugly social consequences of sanctifying private profit.
• Until 31 January. Box office: 020-8940 3633. Venue: Orange Tree, Richmond.
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