“GENEVA,” A PLAY OF THE MOMENT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 8

“GENEVA,” A PLAY OF THE MOMENT

Bernard Shaw’s Latest CHANGES TO KEEP IT -'UP TO DATE George Bernard Shaw has begun to realize that it is a rather awkward business writing a play on current international events, or rather employing such data for the purposes of a play. His “Geneva,” with its very convincing last act, was produced at the last Malvern festival. But by the time it reached the Seville Theatre, London, events had moved so fast in Europe that Shaw was compelled to rewrite certain passages in order to bring the play up to date. And possibly by the present time, if the play is still running, he will find it imperative to make further changes, as Hitler is making history at high pressure. ' Two features of the play remain, the discursive preamble and the brilliantsustained climax presented iu the last act. Shaw calls his “Geneva” ‘“a play oftfthe moment,” but moments have a way of flying, us Mr. Shaw soon found when Hitler marched into Austria. In a forenote to his play, Mr. Shaw says: “‘Geneva’ is a title that speaks for itself. The critics are sure to complain that I have not solved all the burning problems of the present and future in it and restored peace to Europe and Asia. They always do. I am flattered by the implied omniscience and omnipotence; but I am also infuriated by the unreasonableness of the demand. I am neither omniscient noi omnipotent; and the utmost I, or any other playwright can do is to extract comedy and tragedy from the existing situation and wait to see what will become of it.

“Unfortunately nobody seems to know what the existing situation is. For instance, bow many people have heard of the Intellectual Co-operation Committee? It will probably be dismissed by the critics as an overstrained fiction. It is nothing of the sort. The League of Nations had not been long in existence when a Frenchman, perceiving that without intellectual co-opera-tion the League could do nothing but practise the old diplomacy, founded the committee in Parris. Everyone was delighted; and the most eminent intellects in the world gave their names as intellectual co-operators. The Frenchman gave a million francs to endow the committee: but as the French franc had dropped to twopence (having been largely borrowed at tenpence) the committee wars stony broke at the end of a month. It stiU survived in a little office somewhere, and did and does some clerical work in listing universities, learned societies and the like; but intellectually it sank into a profound catalepsy. “When Romain Rolland, with the late Henri Barbusse, and their friends tried from time to time to organize some international movement on the extreme left, and invited me, as they always did, to join them, I asked them why thev did not operate through the I.C. Committee of the League, which was sleeping ready to their hands. At last the Committee, which occasionally woke up in the person of Gilbert Murray, asked me to correspond with the League. This very nearly struck me dumb; for what on earth was I to correspond about? Now, Gilbert Murray has a strong sense of humour and believes in telepathy. He practises it, too. And so it came about that I found It growing on me that there was some fun to be got on the stage out of the Committee. That was how the play began. How it will finish—for in the theatre it only stops, it does not finish —nobody knows. I call your attention, however, to one novelty. Instead of making the worst of all the dictators, which only drives them out of the League, I have made the best of them, and may even challenge them to live up to their portraits, if they can. I hope they will like it. Also I hope you will.”