John Bull's Other Island

Synopsis

Property speculator Tom Broadbent, a well-meaning Englishman drunk on the romanticism of Ireland, persuades his Irish-born business partner Larry Doyle to make a visit home after eighteen years. The purpose: to develop golf courses and a hotel in a backward rural community. The pair get more than they bargained for when they reach Rosscullen, and Broadbent sets about a plan to develop his partner's home and his girl.

Our Review:

15 September 2003

Dominic Dromgoole, director of Oxford Stage Company, was converted to Bernard Shaw after reading John Bull's Other Island and it’s easy to see why.

There are a few Irish literary figures who the British have claimed as their own, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw to name but two. But in John Bull's Other Island Shaw reveals himself as an Irish rather than British writer, his topic not trivial romances in the home counties but the mission of one British man to convert a little pocket of Ireland into an economically viable area.

Thomas Broadbent has a purpose and that is to ‘save’ any country less fortunate than his own, and his latest project is Ireland. This is where he drags his colleague and friend Larry Doyle, to Larry’s home town, to survey and assess the possibilities for industrialisation by their syndicate. Thomas is also enchanted by the picture Larry paints of a beautiful Irish maid, Nora Reilly who is waiting for Larry. <...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (82.35.62.168) - 16 September 2003:

This is a witty and entertaining play by Bernard Shaw and this production and the acting is of a good standard, but by the end of the night I couldn’t help feeling that it didn’t really hang together properly and I found several parts of the play very wearingly old fashioned. ...

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