"George Bernard Shaw" A Talk by Brian Freeland

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: ‘PLAYING THE CLOWN’ is a stage presentation from Brian Freeland described as part talk, part one-man-show.

Seeing a production of Shaw's play Man and Superman at the Bristol Old Vic during the early weeks of his National Service encouraged Brian to consider the theatre as a potential career: three weeks after demobilisation he started work at the London Palladium. Large chunks of the next twenty years were spent touring abroad, usually for the British Council, often with plays by or about G B Shaw.

In this presentation Brian is both narrator and player, adding memories of his overseas tours to his light-hearted chronicles of the life, the works, the correspondence and the complicated personal relationships of the “best playwright since Shakespeare”. Shaw called the clown “the best part of the circus” and wrote “all my life I have been merely playing the clown”.Mrs Patrick Campbell always started her letters to him “Dear Joey”, a reference to that other great clown Joseph Grimaldi.

PLAYING THE CLOWN tells Shaw’s story with respect, with admiration, and - as Shaw himself always told it - with humour.