A Plethora of Bashvilles: Shaw’s “Masterpiece” and the Musicals It Spawned

ABSTRACT:Shaw’s 1901 play The Admirable Bashville, itself an adaptation of his novel Cashel Byron’s Profession, has twice been adapted for the professional musical stage. In the first of these adaptations, the 1983 Bashville, Shaw’s play was left largely untouched in favor of an outwardly reverential adaptation that inserted songs at various points in the original text and expanded its nonspeaking cast to allow for large-scale musical ensembles. In contrast, the 1995 Bashville in Love was a much smaller-scale work that took considerable liberties with its source material. This article analyzes the textual changes and musical treatments in both works and concludes that the latter adaptation, in spite of its numerous departures from Shaw’s play, is in fact the more Shavian of the two musicals.