nolanpowers

Portraits is quite an achievement, as dauntingly detailed in its character descriptions as Shaw (who also wanted his actors to have particular heights, clothes, and eye colors, and his sets to have specific furniture), and as discursive in its stage directions as O’Neill.

This not to say Portraits is Shavian, or as steeped in naturalistic turmoil as O’Neill. Rather, as Higgs Boson (an amusing pseudonym) states in his author note, it’s an attempt, on the whole successful, to revive the Theatre of the Absurd, with its echoes of Ionesco, Sartre, and Durenmatt, and, farther afield, A Frolic of His Own[…]