●●●●●

Perhaps unbeknownst to some Irish theatregoers, the last decade has been something of purple patch for Irish drama across the water. Partly thanks to the outgoing National Theatre Director, Nicholas Hytner, Irish playwrights past and present have been granted significant attention in London’s theatrical hemisphere.  In the last decade, The National alone has shown  two Conor McPherson plays, The Seafarer (2006) and The Veil (2011) as well as St. Joan (2007), Happy Days (2009), Juno and the Paycock (2011) and most recently The Silver Tassie (2014). The adaptation of Colm Toibin’s Testament of Mary with Fiona Shaw was also a major success at the Barbican last year.

This trend was further brought to light this week as Simon Godwin’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman starring Ralph Fiennes opened at the National to much acclaim. For those not familiar with the play, no,  kryptonite doesn’t feature. Think less capes, more international socialism. Think less skin tight suits and more ardent feminism, anti-heroes instead of heroes and Nietsche’s uber-mensch rather than Clarke Kent being “uber-hench”. And certainly don’t expect a neat hour and a half Hollywood job; this is an epic not for the faint-hearted. Even the great man struggled: Shaw was said to have complained that seeing his 56,000 word production performed for the first time “nearly killed him”. Sympathetically, Godwin has shaved nearly 50 mins off the running time through extensive editing, however it still comes in at just under four hours.

Shaw’s principle plot is in itself fairly straight forward. Set in early 20th century Britain, It revolves around a brilliantly troubled anti-hero Jack Tanner, who is initially the picture of a renaissance dandy, perpetually seducing women with his artistic sensibilities and witty charm. However, Shaw reverses these roles as Tanner is hunted doggedly for his hand in marriage by Ann Whitfield. The farce continues as he flees to Spain where he is abducted by a group of Marxist revolutionaries, only to be tracked down again by Whitfield.

All straight forward so far. However, whilst stranded in the Sierra Nevada, in perhaps a uniquely Shavian enterprise, Tanner has a dream inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni in which he is envisaged as Don Juan. He is condemned to hell where much of the ensuing action takes place. The second half of the play is dominated by a philosophical debate with the Devil and other re-configured characters from the initial plot, transported into the dreamscape. Topics of discussion range from misanthropy to God, feminism to contemporary politics and even a typically witty meta-theatrical rant about the British theatre-going public.

Godwin’s production excels from start to finish.  Fiennes was, somewhat inevitably, brilliant as Shaw’s anti-hero. Occasionally he roamed the stage with debonair arrogance, at other times he cowered from one of  many assailants on his masculinity. As Godwin revealed in an interview last week, Fiennes took almost six months to learn the lines for this extraordinary part before rehearsals had even begun. It was perhaps this familiarity with the script that allowed Fiennes to chew through some of Tanner’s essay-length speeches, with flare and a certain nonchalance.

The play went someway to updating Shaw for the 21st century. The use of a electrical screens, mobile phones as well as casting Tanner’s butler Straker as a mixed race South-Londoner rather than the Cockney of the original performances contributed to this. The vintage Rolls Royce unveiled in Act II, worked against this, giving the play no definitive time-sphere. The effect was perhaps to suggest a timeless quality to Shaw’s play, suggesting an unchanging and even pre-emptive nature to his philosophical treatise.

Godwin’s production had a sense of the spectacular, owing perhaps to the ambitious scale and the intensity required in addressing Shaw’s philosophy. It carried the responsibility of being part of a wider finale to Hytner’s tenure at the National Theatre, and it had the feel of a final eruption of fireworks that conclude a particularly impressive display. Hytner’s post ends in March; this will be his penultimate piece in his present position. Fittingly, this play celebrated one of the critical aspects of his tenure: a commitment to Irish Theatre past and present that has proved to be an integral part of the National Theatre’s programme for the last couple of decades. Amidst this celebration, it is worth acknowledging the great role Hytner has played in directing, producing and promoting Irish theatre abroad.