VILLAGE WOOING has considerable charm. A writer of guide books (Mark Fleischmann) on a cruise is cornered by a chatterbox (Madeleine Hutchins). “I never talk to women,” he says. “If I talk to women they always want to marry me.” He’s doomed to marry her. The role is said to be a posthumous portrait of Lytton Strachey; it could just as easily be a portrait of Shaw.
HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND is a typical farce in the French vaudeville manner, except that it has been anglicised and all the naughty-nineties sexiness removed. Shaw gives the hackneyed eternal triangle a neat twist. The husband is absolutely delighted that a young man should be in love with his wife and write poems to her.