Dartmouth Events

Academy-Award nominee Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel) plays Jack Tanner in this exhilarating reinvention of George Bernard Shaw’s witty, provocative classic. Tanner, a celebrated radical thinker and rich bachelor, seems an unlikely choice as guardian to the alluring heiress Ann. But she takes it in her assured stride and, despite the love of a poet, she decides to marry and tame this dazzling revolutionary.

Appalled by the whiff of domesticity, Tanner flees to Spain, where he is captured by bandits and meets The Devil. An extraordinary dream-debate, heaven versus hell, ensues. Following in hot pursuit, Ann is there when Tanner awakes, as fierce in her certainty as he is in his.

A dazzling display of rat-a-tat-tat verbal dexterity that showcases Fiennes' charisma, skill and, above all, stamina, this handsomely crafted revival honors the integrity of Shaw's vision while managing to keep this potentially unwieldy, seldom-mounted beast of a play boxed up within a digestible three-and-a half-hour running time, including a 20-minute intermission.

Opening a hundred years after the play was first performed in its entirety—including the third-act symposium of ideas set in hell that many productions eschew—director Godwin's modern-dress version rediscovers a vital spirit in the Edwardian-age material that feels somehow timely and still provocative.

A romantic comedy, an epic fairytale, a fiery philosophical debate, Man and Superman asks fundamental questions about how we live. (180m)

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