Subverse Aphrodesia

What Would Shaw See

Upon learning The Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre would be producing Shaw's Candida Dec. 19 through Jan. 29, I sought out a description of the play. The drastic difference I found between Penguin Classics clearly patriarchal point of view and the Arden Theatre Company's considerably more women-centered concept of the play is astounding.

Per Arden: "Shaw's warm and witty play challenges conventional wisdom about relationships between the sexes. When an empowered wife is forced to choose between her steadfast clergyman husband and the passionate young poet who has fallen in love with her, all three come to a fuller understanding of love, devotion and commitment."

Per Penguin: "Bernard Shaw mocks self-deluding ideamism in Candida when the foolish young poet Marchbanks becomes infatuated with the wife of a Socialist preacher."