Shaw's Corner, Ayot St Lawrence

For the second year, Studio ‘68 of Theatre Arts, London, has been invited to give the Birthday Performances in the grounds of Shaw’s house at Ayot St. Lawrence. The performances will be on Saturday and Sunday, July 19 and 20, at 7 p.m., and will present Tom Rutherfurd in the Studio ‘68 production of Shaw’s “The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet”, preceded by Ellen Pollock in a scene from “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” with Sheila Steafel. Mr. Rutherfurd has played Hamlet in Robert Henderson’s American production of the play, as well as Blanco Posnet at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City’. The Stage, 10 July 1969. ‘For the second year, Studio ‘68, which operates at St. Mary Abbot’s Theatre, Kensington, is making a summer trip to that green little Hertfordshire retreat of Ayot St. Lawrence, which, the whole world knows, was for so long the chosen home of a very great playwright. Open to the public all the year round, this modest little house, within easy reach of Old Welwyn, still has the feel of harbouring the ghost of the familiar knickerbockered figure. It is, of course, known to the world as Shaw’s Corner … It is in [the] garden that Kensington’s Studio 68 have been invited by the Shaw Society to give birthday performances, on July 19 and 20, of one of the least-known of the Shavian dramas, “The Showing up of Blanco Posnet,” or as Shaw himself, always a spelling faddist, insisted upon it, “The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet"' (Westminster & Pimlico News, 11 July 1969).

‘The 1979 Birthday Tribute was presented by the Shaw Society at Shaw’s Corner at Ayot St. Lawrence on the 21st and 22nd July. The programme consisted of two one act plays by Shaw, “Overruled” and “The Inca of Perusalem” together with a scene from the third act of “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”. The young actors from Studio 68 of Theatre Arts London had great style and attack in the plays under the direction of Ellen Pollock and Robert Henderson'. The Shavian, the Journal of the Shaw Society, vol.5 no.3, winter 1979/80.

‘Shaw’s birthday celebrations, Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, nr Welwyn. July 20, 21, 6.15 pm. Benny Green gives an account of George Bernard Shaw’s battle with the censor, as a prelude to a performance of The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet in the garden of the house Shaw lived in from 1906 until his death in 1950’. Illustrated London News, 1 July 1985.

The dates shown are conjectural. ‘Ayot Productions, founded by Toni Kanal and Richard Dinghy Day, produced this year to commemorate the 50th year after Shaw’s death, two short plays, The Inca of Perusalem and Why She Would Not on the lawn at Shaw’s Corner. Those not well versed in Shaviana could be forgiven for not being familiar with either play, both being rather slender works, jeux d’esprit perhaps rather than high drama but admirably suited to whet the appetite of the picnickers on the lawn at Ayot with a good taste of Shavian wit. The Inca of Perusalem, written in the days of the First World War with hints of the privations in comfort then being endured and more than a sidelong glance at monarchial rule and a foretaste of the dilemma that is posed in The Apple Cart, had a very convincing Inca in Paul Sirr, an assertive Ermyntrude in Julia Taudevin and a timid Princess in Toni Kanal. The comic vein was well sustained and carried this “tomfoolery” across very entertainingly’. The Shavian, the Journal of the Shaw Society, vol.9 no.1, winter 2000.