Being in Edinburgh during last week-end I went to Bernard
Shaw's new play The Millionairess, which Scotland has had the opportunity of seeing before London. It is in no Apple Cart vein ; indeed the chief question it raises is whether Mr. Shaw means anything or whether it is just first- class fooling. I think pretty certainly the latter, even though the penniless Egyptian doctor does in the end agree under heavy pressure to marry the millionairess, not for her millions, to which he is completely indifferent, but because she has the most marvellous pulse in the world, " a pulse in a hundred thousand," and he couldn't bear the idea of separation from it. Whatever else the play may be judged to be, it is a signal triumph for Miss Edith Evans, who is hardly off the stage the whole evening. And if what Mr. Shaw wanted to do was to provide admirable war-time entertainment he has succeeded to perfection ; as Miss Evans observed in a neat little speech on Saturday night, " If we go on playing and you go on corning I don't think a Blitzkrieg or anything like that will get us down." But, as a matter of fact, Mr. Shaw wrote the play dome time before the war.
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