George Bernard Shaw is one of the few men who is just as good as he thinks he is. For although "Candida" is a play of cosier and snugger England, safe from air raids and the Red menace, there is nothing cost or snug or dated about the bearded Fabian's timeless masterpiece. Nor is there anything dated about Cornelia Otis Skinner who looks almost too young for thirty year old Candida.
Miss Skinner is not only beautiful and a superb artisan. Her production is as polished, professional, and thoroughly competent as any that has come to Boston this year. Shaw is never dull even when played badly; when played as beautifully as it was last night before a spell-bound audience at the Colonial it is superb.
The story of the wise and lovely Candida, the shy and passionate young poet and the outwardly magnificent minister is almost too well-known to bear retelling. Candida is forced to choose between her husband, a complacent and fabulously successful preacher, and David Marchbanks, a sensitive and pathetic boy of eighteen who "understands" her, And paradoxically it is the Reverend James Mavor Morell who wins out, because he is weaker in hid magnificent external strength than Marchbanks, who clings to his loneliness and misery as a retreat form a world where you have to decide how much to tip the cabby and haggle with greengrocers.
Although Miss Skinner's performance is deft and sure, she does not hog this show. With the exception of Philip Faversham, who is colossally unconvincing as the Reverend James' worshipping young assistant, the cast is excellent. John Cromwell is a sensitive and appealing Marchbanks; in clumsier hands Marchbanks can be clowned like a Tarkingtonian adolescent. Onslow Stevens as well as Cromwell has steered clear of extremes. His Morell id not too pompous and too fond of his own voice to be loved by Candida. And Dorothy Sands is the old-maid incarnate in the role of Miss Proserpine Garnett, Morell's typist who is as much in love with him as all his feminine flock.
It is hard not to be ecstatic about a production like this, but flaws are to pick. Perhaps Miss Skinner draws too heavily on one of the fullest bags of tricks in the business; her white hands are at times just a touch too dramatic. But from Donald Oenslager's faithful Victorian drawing room set to Prossy's champagne jag, this production is all of a piece. It is worth going to see, for Pygmalion is not Mr. Shaw's only triumph.
