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Smash: An Adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Novel An Unsocial Socialist
Smash: An Adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Novel An Unsocial Socialist
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Author: Jeffrey Hatcher Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Format: Softcover # of Pages: 79 Pub. Date: 1997 ISBN-10: 0822215535 ISBN-13: 9780822215530 Cast Size: 5 women, 5 men
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About
the Play:
Smash: An Adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Novel An Unsocial Socialist is a full-length
comedy by Jeffrey Hatcher. This political comedy features a
runaway groom who abandons his bride on their wedding day so he can
overthrow the British government. Eventually he infiltrates a women's
college, where he attempts to sow the seeds of revolution by
radicalizing the future consorts of society's power brokers. Buckle
up for a witty face-off between socialism and capitalism,
intermingled with some battle-of-the-sexes fun.
Smash is an adaptation
of George Bernard Shaw's novel An Unsocial Socialist,
set at the twilight of Edwardian England, in 1910. The story centres
on Sidney Trefusis, a millionaire Socialist who leaves his bride on
their wedding day because he fears his passion for her will get in
the way of his plans to overthrow the British government. Sidney
vanishes "underground" – disguises himself as a common
labourer called "Mengels" – and infiltrates Alton
College, a girls' school where well-bred young women are "fitted
and fatted to be put on the marriage market." His plan: Take
over the school and plant the seed of radical Socialism into the
fertile brains of the future consorts of cabinet ministers and kings.
What he doesn't plan on is the presence of one Agatha Wylie, a
sixth-form rabble-rouser, who falls hopelessly in love with both
Sidney and his politics, and just happens to be his deserted wife's
cousin. Love triangles, mistaken identity, and outrageous characters
make this British farce a jolly good time in the theatre.
Smash
premiered in 1996 at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Washington. It
received a variety of favourable reviews and
has become a popular choice for school and community theatre
productions.
Cast: 5 women, 5 men
What
people say:
"Smash
is witty, cunning, intelligent, and skillful. It is also generous,
something cleverness isn't always. Like Tom Stoppard, the author
makes you the audience feel just as clever as he. Brillliant
writing." — Seattle Weekly
"Smash
is a wonderfully high-style British comedy of manners that evokes
the world of Shaw's high-minded heroes and heroines, but shaped by a
postmodern sensibility … The result is uncanny, a hybrid with two
voices that, depending on your reference points, either feels like
the practice of channeling or more like a well-thought-out (albeit
posthumous) artistic collaboration." — Seattle
Herald
"The
story mixes equal parts political comedy with comedy of manners…it
is a sparkling evening of Shaw for our post-Stoppard age, with loads
of clever wordplay and impassioned debate about the structure of
society and the preferred form of change … a fine evening out in
high Shavian fashion." — BackStage West
About the Playwright:
Jeffrey Hatcher is an
award-winning American writer for stage, screen, and television. He
grew up in Ohio before attending New York University to study acting.
After a brief career on stage, he turned his attention to writing.
His many award-winning plays, original and adaptations, have been
performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in theatres around the world.
George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London
School of Economics. Although born in Ireland, he spent most of his
adult life in England, and wrote more than 60 plays for the English
stage. He won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest
honour available to any writer in the world, and an Academy Award for
the screenplay of Pygmalion in l938. |
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Carlo Goldoni, translated and adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and Paolo Emilio Landi
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