Watford Palace Theatre is to have a Q + A session with the cast of their current show "Arms and the Man" written by the famous George Bernard Shaw. til Saturday 22 Oct 2016

DIRECTOR Brigid at the age of 16 "did this play at school for O level, and have loved it since. It takes a sharp look at our human tendency to idealise reality, be it about love, or the grimmer realities of war - but the play is full of warmth as well as wit."

Also attending that night were members of the 'Shaw’s Corner' , the National Trust Property that was Shaw’s home for 44 years gives a brief outline of Shaw’s life.

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Hannah Morrish as Raina Petkoff

Pete Ashmore as Captain Bluntschli

Assad Zaman as Sergius Saranoff

Kathryn O'Reilly as Catherine Petkoff

Walter van Dyk as Major Petkoff

Jill McAusland as Louka

David Webber as Nicola

Arms and the Man was George Bernard Shaw's first commercially successful play. It was first produced on April 21, 1894 at the Avenue Theatre and published in 1898 as part of Shaw's Plays Pleasant volume. It is a comedy about idealized love versus true love.

Arms and the Man, has just seen a new Paperback as of 5 Sep 2016

( http://amzn.to/2dqAFdY )

Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man tells the story of Raina, a beautiful young women who is in love with Sergius, a dashing and heroic young officer.

But when Captain Bluntschli, a battle hardened professional soldier on the losing side appears in Raina’s bedroom she finds that there is a great deal more to love and war than she first thought.

Arms and the Man is a sparkling romantic comedy which tackles our illusions and ideals with all the wit, vigour and romance of a golden-age Hollywood movie.

Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912), and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, Arms and the Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas.