First Night Melodramatic Staunton tramples over Shaw's garden comedy

George Bernard Shaw was either paid by the word or really bored in the late 1800s, because his plays are long.

- TIM BANO THEATRE CRITIC

Sometimes someone turns them into a musical — Pygmalion became My Fair Lady — and that helps, but more often than not we have to suffer the revivals: admire the forward-thinking, the occasionally dazzling verbal flair, the socially switched-on-ness, and endure the long digressions on the finer points of Cambridge’s Tripos examination. So why on earth would you want to watch GBS now? Director Dominic Cooke gives us two enticements: one, he’s cut the play massively. Hour forty-five straight through. Bang. Second, brothel-keeper Mrs Warren and her prim daughter Vivie are played by real life Imelda Staunton and her daughter Bessie Carter (who happens to be in Bridgerton).