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George Bernard Shaw on marriage timely again

By Michael Barnes | Monday, November 24, 2008, 03:50 PM

Every 10 to 20 years, George Bernard Shaw comes back into fashion. I don’t mean his plays. The major titles — “Pygmalion,” “Heartbreak House,” “Major Barbara,” “Arms and the Man,” “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” “Candida” — are never far from the theatrical boards.

I’m referring to Shaw’s Fabian socialism and preachy disquisitions on controversial topics. His opinions sound especially tinny during intermittently quiet or consensual political and social cycles. “Getting Married,” a comedy with virtually no action and a lot of speech-making about the social institution around a kitchen table, probably sounded fresh during the feminist/swinger 1970s, but rather tendentious in the 1980s, when marriage was not up for widespread discussion.

Marriage is back in the news, thanks to the unexpectedly quick acceptance of gay partnerships and the political backlash against their advances on the social front. So Different Stages, Austin’s most literate community theater, has revived Shaw’s “Getting Married” at The Vortex.

Shaw zeroes in on the difficulty of divorce in the English civil sphere, but also hashes out the age-old entanglements between church and state on the issue. At one point, the unhappily single or married relations attempt to hammer out a “partnership contract” to replace marriage.

Director Norman Blumensaadt’s cast handles the language pretty adroitly — Tyler Jones is unusually adept at turning a conventionally snobbish juvenile into a credible leading man — so I smiled for almost three hours. One entirely un-Shavian scene dramatizes a ecstatic religious vision by one character, played with zest and zeal by Emily Errington.

Almost everything else transpires on an intellectual plane and the marriage debate sounds as timely as this morning’s headlines.

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