A comedy by Bernard Shaw.
The action takes place at Mr. Tarleton's house at Hindhead, Surrey, in the year 1910.

This is a production to mark the birthday (actually July 26) of George Bernard Shaw. Misalliance is lesser-known Shaw, first produced at the Duke of York's in 1910. The author described it as a "debate in one sitting", and Max Beerbohm, trying to disentangle some thread of dramatic unity, decided that "it is about anything and everything that has chanced to come into Mr. Shaw's head". Here, then, is one of Shaw's conversation-pieces, and as such we know what to expect from it. The usual Shavian hobby-horses are ridden - in this case, particularly, the problems of eugenics, with particular reference to the Life Force; there is the spate of calculated provocation, and those interruptions of barely relevant action (notably, here, the arrival out of the blue of an aeroplane containing an undergraduate and a professional woman acrobat!), as though the author had suddenly said to himself, "Right now! That's enough talk for the moment - I'd better make something happen!"; and over and above all there is the presiding spirit of that marvellously agile mind that was so often irreverent, nearly always witty, and never still. The forum for debate is the country house of John Tarleton, underwear manufacturer.

There is a wildly varied assortment of characters; one notes, especially, in Hypatia a characteristic specimen of the Shavian New Woman, chasing her man and deciding her own destiny. (Peter Forster)