Dear Liar

Shining in the bewitching repartee between two great wits Katharine Cornell and Brian Aherne played Mrs. Campbell and Shaw on Broadway. The play toured this hemisphere and Europe for two years before its return to Off-Broadway. It is a masterful compendium of badinage with Shaw and Mrs. Campbell in scenes of both confrontation and distancing. Here is Shaw in all his contradictions; he adores the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell (born Beatrice Stella Tanner) most ascetically and persuades her to play in Pygmalion. He frets with her when she leaves for America and yet he refuses permission to publish the letters that would save her from bankruptcy. Mrs. Campbell is his match; she published them anyway. Here is a strange and intriguing romance fought around the world.