Labour College, Earl's Court, London

Performed at the Labour College, Penywen Road, Earl’s Court, London, with Shaw’s ‘The Dark Lady of the Sonnets’, by students of the Labour College and members of the Plebs League; the cast included Aneurin Bevan (Mander & Mitchenson, p. 127). ‘South Wales, Durham, and Yorkshire miners and railwaymen, with a Londoner or two as leaven, gave a remarkably spirited performance of Mr. Shaw’s “melodrama,” “The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet,” at the Labour College, Earl’s Court, last night. “Blanco Posnet” is really a typical Wild West story, retold by a great moralist. With its sentiment watered down to sentimentality, one can easily imagine it as a popular kinema film. Therefore, the zest and sense of strenuous life which these young Labour students brought to its performance admirably conveyed the broad and simple effects, the high colours and deep shadows after which Shaw, the evangelist, was aiming' (Daily News (London), 29 March 1920). 'A great deal of interest was taken in the performances at the Labour College, Earl’s Court, during the week-end, by the students and staff, of two plays by Bernard Shaw, one the social melodrama “The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet,” and the other “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.” Readers of the Western Mail will no doubt like to hear of the remarkable success of the performances because the college is under the joint control of the South Wales Miners’ Federation and the National Union of Railwaymen, and because a considerable number of those who took part hail from South Wales' (Western Mail, 30 March 1920).