The Devil’s Disciple [excerpt]

Summary: This Associated Television programme for ITV offered a ‘live excerpt’ of G. B. Shaw’s melodrama The Devil’s Disciple from a special performance at the Winter Garden Theatre, London.
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: Sunday 18 November 1956
Time: 9.30pm
Channel: ITV
Production company: Associated Television (ATV, 1955-1982)