The Theater: Old Play in Manhattan, Mar. 2, 1953

Misalliance (by George Bernard Shaw) has long had a reputation for being virtually unplayable. Very likely this rumor got around because for years few people ever saw it played. Performed on Broadway last week for the first time since 1917, it pranced and hallooed and came hilariously to life, giving further reason for saluting Shaw's ghost with: "This was the noblest showman of them all."

Showman in Misalliance Shaw certainly was — far more, indeed, than dramatist. He is armed with a text of sorts — family life in all possible aspects. But far from expounding it from a pulpit, he...