Civic Playhouse, Leeds

‘For two weeks the Civic Playhouse is reviving Bernard Shaw’s “The Showing of Blanco Posnet,” a play of the author’s aggressive years’ (Leeds Mercury, 17 January 1931). ‘Bernard Shaw is always daring and always witty, but the standard by which these qualities are judged varies with the years. The wit of “Overruled,” his little extravaganza on flirtation, and the daring of his speculation on Eternal Purpose in “The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet” do not strike and startle so vividly as his display of those same qualities in, say, “The Apple Cart.” Moreover, the performance at the Leeds Civic Playhouse last night left the impression that full value of this still piquant dialogue can be secured only if it is delivered by actors having the capacity to project themselves, mentally, back to the period in which the plays were written, This the quartet did not in “Overruled” … “Blanco Posnet” was much more effective because it gave the company more to bite at; but it suffered from miscasting. Graham French, as the Elder, quite failed to convince that he had ever been boozy Posnet, who had drunk until he dared drink no more, and then turned religious. His plausibility was that of a Chinese laundryman, rather than that of a sanctimonious humbug who could fool a Wild West township. Ernest Hawtin’s Blanco was a haggardly impressive “bad man”; but his “shewing up,” which in another place would have been called a revelation, had not sufficient spiritual intensity. Blanco has seen a blinding light from Heaven; his message must have the searing flame of prophecy. The oft-repeated “rotten” should have expressed all those unfathomable things for which Blanco had no words; for Mr. Hawtin it seemed merely a forceful adjective. Alfred Hartopp spoke with excellent authority as the sheriff, and Annie Bellerby showed marked ability in a vigorous character sketch of the raddled and bedizened Feemy Evans. The court house crowd rose to the elemental fury of a French Revolutionary trial, and the scene was cleverly managed. “Blanco” was well worth reviving: no knowledge of Shaw could be adequate without it’ (Yorkshire Evening Post, 20 January 1931). ‘The more one sees of Bernard Shaw, the more one is baffled by him, and the more one wonders whether he, himself, is not sometimes baffled, if not about his intentions, at least about the significance of his accomplishment. “The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet” is a “sermon in crude melodrama,” but that is not enough. It is a sermon preached amid the traditional hysterics of the Wild West, a kind of philosophical adventure in the world of Buffalo Bill. The Civic Players, in opening a second week at the Albert Hall, put up a stout fight against a vast improbability, and achieved a performance technically finished, but aesthetically unsatisfying … These doubts, however, are entirely of Mr. Shaw’s creating. No blame attaches to the players, several of whom gave performances of distinction’ (Yorkshire Evening Post, 27 January 1931).