Dorothy and I to the first night of first playing of "Back to Methuselah" last night at Court Theatre. 'House Full' boards outside before the performance. I had asked for and offered to pay for seats, in order to please D., but I received an apologetic letter from the manager to say that they were really all gone. Afterwards a box was returned and Barry Jackson himself gave it to me; which I thought was rather graceful. The affair was a solennite. But not quite the usual kind of first night.
Walls of box dead black and of stone. We could see the empty orchestra and the nakedness of Adam and Eve. Curtain going up announced by a sort of clash of a cymbal. I was very bored by the play. I could see nothing in it; neither action, nor character, nor a sermon, nor wit. The game of finding new words played by the characters seemed silly. It was too far round to go to smoke in the interval so we stayed in our tomb. In the second act I went to sleep and had to be wakened for fear a snore might be heard on stage. Audience indifferent but very polite. Many calls. Play began at 8.37 and ended at about 10.15. Barry Jackson said author in house but wouldn't appear until the last night.In fact Shaw had the box over us. His programme fell down at the end and was wafted into our box. Dorothy took it away as being 'historical'. Shaw has an exalted opinion of "Back to Methuselah" as both literature and philosophy; in the press release he wrote for its publishers (Constable & Co. London) he said it would "interest biologists, religious leaders, and lovers of the marvellous in fiction as well as lovers of the theatre" and described it as his supreme work in dramatic literature. He considered it a book for reading rather than playing on the stage. He was right about that anyway. If the play had been written by anybody else it wouldn't even have been published. A most depressing night.
