There could hardly have been two people who seemed less likely to be attracted to each other than George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Dublin-born Shaw was shy, socially awkward, the product of an alcoholic father and a distant mother. She had moved to London to pursue a fruitless career in singing for herself and her daughter. Shaw followed her there, determined to make himself into a novelist and a socialist firebrand. He fell into becoming an art and music critic and eventually a self-proclaimed arbiter of theatrical taste. After roundly criticizing Shakespeare he took to writing plays of his own, whose success was not immediate. He remained unmarried until his forties, then, after a wild infatuation with the actress Ellen Terry, married the wealthy, intelligent, thirty-nine year old Charlotte Payne-Townshend. Their’s was to be a life-long and lustless marriage, as Charlotte was resolved to bear no children and to enter into no sexual relations at all. Shaw’s reaction seems to have been to become a vegetarian, a social-activist, and to court a series of beautiful young actresses.

Mrs. Pat, on the other hand, was born in India to a British adventurer, who made and lost a series of fortunes, and a mother who was a melancholy Italian beauty. The vivacious Beatrice Stella Tanner was dragged by her family to England as her father pursued his financial chimeras. Looking for security as she came to marriageable age, she found herself pregnant by Pat Campbell, whose financial abilities mirrored those of her father. After they married and her two children were born (Beo, for “beloved” and Stella, after herself), Mr. Pat took off for Australia, and later South Africa, in search of his fortune. The meager monies he was able to send home forced his wife to find some means of supporting herself and her two children. Her outgoing personality and native talent for acting led her to a series of engagements on the stage. She rapidly used her instincts and intellect to perfect her craft while her dark-eyed beauty kept her in demand. Soon she was commanding attention for her performances in both contemporary and classical roles.

This is the story of how their two paths crossed. Mrs. Patrick Campbell appearing bewitchingly on the stage and George Bernard Shaw reviewing her performances as he say, enchanted, in the audience. It was only a matter of time before the actress with the absent husband and the playwright with the sexually absent wife would meet and ignite a stormy relationship that would last as long as they both were alive. This play is the story of that relationship.