The Devil’s Disciple

Summary: 1949 BBC live studio production of Bernard Shaw’s comic melodrama The Devil’s Disciple, presented to celebrate the playwright’s 93rd birthday.
Theatre play: The Devil’s Disciple by [George] Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) [more information]
Play synopsis: The action of G. B. Shaw’s comic melodrama The Devil’s Disciple takes place in a small New Hampshire town in 1777 during the American War of Independence. John Wyver writes (on the Screen Plays blog): ‘The charming, rogue-ish and instantly sympathetic Dick Dudgeon returns to the community to inherit his father’s estate just as the British soldiers arrive. In a case of mistaken identity, Dick allows himself to be arrested and threatened with the gallows instead of Pastor Anderson. Neither he nor we are quite sure why he does this (which is part of how smart Shaw is) but his reasons certainly include his feelings for Anderson’s wife, Judith’.
Production history: The Radio Times, 20 July 1956, p.15 states that the play was publicly performed for the first time in New York in 1897; before that there had been a single performance, in which Shaw himself acted, in order to establish copyright.
Date of transmission: Tuesday 26 July 1949
Time: 8.00-10.00
Channel: BBC Television
Production company: BBC

Producer

Harold Clayton

Playwright

[George] Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Sets / Settings

James Bould

Cast

Origination: Live from studio
Vision original: Monochrome
Extant status: No archival copy is known to exist.
Play tags: 18th-century setting; America, as theme or setting; comedy; melodrama; wartime, as theme or setting

Title: Radio Times, 22 July 1949 (Magazine)
Linking notes: listing, p. 42; article by Lionel Hale, ‘Shaw’s Mock Melodrama’, p. 41

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