A review by david_rhee
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

3.0

Man and Superman is a play laden with incongruencies and surprises, and enough interplay between them to make the play predictably unpredictable. First, Shaw establishes the comforts of grounding tradition and then he forcefully infuses it with new blood for gasps and howls. Or maybe not. Who knows? Perhaps the audience was already way past clamoring to upset the old ways and manners. The play takes a bizarre turn when the genteel cast meets up with a gang of brigands in the desert, but that weirdness is quickly outdone by the vision or dream of hell which follows. As might have been suspected the Superman is Nietzsche's Ubermensch as is confirmed in the hell vision. Think man's ascent to superman by Origin of Species and natural selection being humbled by Descent of Man and the sobering realization that the principal being really is woman, or Life Force as Shaw would say. Though I wasn't really feeling this one, it was a funny and entertaining ride.