Misalliance

The central mismatch of this delicious 1909 comedy is a decidedly odd couple: Hypatia, the lusty, free-spirited daughter of a free-thinking, philandering father who made a bundle in the underwear business, and her fiancé Bentley, a.k.a. Bunny, who is all brains and no body and the wealthy son of a powerful Lord. Hypatia longs for something unusual to drop out of the sky. It does. An airplane crashes into the greenhouse, bringing to her an intelligent Adonis and to all the men a fascinating female acrobat. Those ingredients might satisfy a lesser writer but G.B. Shaw is just getting started. Before very long there have been eight marriage proposals and a dash of attempted murder. Widely considered to be one of the great classic plays of the English language, Shaw’s Misalliance continues to be as fresh and modern as when it was written, nearly a hundred years ago.