A late comedy from G. B. Shaw about . . . wait for it . . . Economics: or How Britain's Wealthiest Heiress Dumped Her Useless Philandering Husband, Her Useless Ne'er-do-well Escort and Found Happiness With an Egyptian Doctor to the Poor. Shaw wrote this one to be acted in UPPERCASE and that's just how the cast plays in this BBC Play of the Month production. You have to hang in there during the opening scene as Shaw carefully lays out the relationships & themes, but this gives us time to adjust to the larger-than-life theatrical style the stellar cast use. It's no surprise to find Maggie Smith a mannered marvel, but note how subtly she trims her style as the play deepens in feeling & philosophy into a more naturalistic mode without losing Shavian attitude or altitude. (She must prove herself to the good doctor by living for six months on just her wits & labor.) By Act II, Smith's become a warm beauty after her off-putting entrance. Only Wendy Hiller has equaled her at turning Shaw's female paradoxes into people. The play remains minor Shaw, but it grows on you. Nice shiny transfer from the original PAL video system, too.
6 Reviews
The tale of a shrew who can't be tamed.
mark.waltz14 January 2013
Warning: Spoilers
She may be considered a lady, but in society, there's a different name for her that isn't used unless describing the resident of a kennel. This paraphrase from "The Women" is a perfect way to describe Epifania, the wealthiest and most unhappy woman in England who is sad that her father's estate was reduced from hundreds of millions of pounds to about 35,000,000. She is one of those ridiculously silly women who is certain that money not only buys happiness, it retains it, keeps husbands under her thumb, and her lovers even closer. She thinks she can make a penniless Egyptian doctor her next conquest just by snapping her fingers. Epifania can also be ragingly violent, something her latest lover Charles Gray accidentally finds out when he insults her father and how he increased their estate.
This is a much more faithful adaption of the George Bernard Shaw play than the 1960 Sophia Loren/Peter Sellers comedy which focused only on the relationship between Epifania and the Egyptian doctor and utilized the gallery of acting tricks by Sellers to entice his fans while utilizing the Shaw name after the Broadway production of "My Fair Lady" (based upon Shaw's "Pygmallion") was a smash hit. You definitely will not like the character Smith plays, but the actress, you will adore every mark she makes, from her entrance, pushing her fur clad self through the unfortunate people standing in her way through the snobby way she talks to everybody around her, even intruding in on a man's coat factory and taking over everything in the process. This is a woman who knows what she wants, and what that is means running everybody around her. Leona Helmsley should have been so classy in her Queen of Mean reign as Smith's delightfully eccentric reigns terror over everybody in her way. This is the type of wealthy woman that gigolos should avoid at all cost!
This is a much more faithful adaption of the George Bernard Shaw play than the 1960 Sophia Loren/Peter Sellers comedy which focused only on the relationship between Epifania and the Egyptian doctor and utilized the gallery of acting tricks by Sellers to entice his fans while utilizing the Shaw name after the Broadway production of "My Fair Lady" (based upon Shaw's "Pygmallion") was a smash hit. You definitely will not like the character Smith plays, but the actress, you will adore every mark she makes, from her entrance, pushing her fur clad self through the unfortunate people standing in her way through the snobby way she talks to everybody around her, even intruding in on a man's coat factory and taking over everything in the process. This is a woman who knows what she wants, and what that is means running everybody around her. Leona Helmsley should have been so classy in her Queen of Mean reign as Smith's delightfully eccentric reigns terror over everybody in her way. This is the type of wealthy woman that gigolos should avoid at all cost!
Great test for fiances
HotToastyRag3 March 2021
In this clever George Bernard Shaw story, a wealthy woman and her fiancé are put to the test. Really, every wealthy person should put their sweethearts to this test; it's a great way to root out the gold diggers and those who will squander your fortune within a year. Send your fiancé out into the world with the clothes on their back and two thousand pounds (or dollars), and in six months if they haven't turned it into over a million (this is inflation for today), then you break off your engagement. Isn't that brilliant?
In this BBC televised version, Maggie Smith stars as the petulant woman who loves having money and men at her fingertips. Her father is the one who thought up the genius test, and when she falls for an Egyptian doctor, she fears telling him about it. She needn't fear, for his mother made him promise to conduct a similar test with any woman he wanted to marry. Off they both go to see if they can each pass the test!
The Millionairess a funny story, and this one's infinitely better than the 1960 film version. In the original, a lot of the plot is cut out so Peter Sellars can have more screen time (big surprise), and there's an added twist that's incestuous: Sellars also plays the role of her father. In this one, you just get to focus on Maggie Smith and her hilariously spoiled, naïve attitude.
In this BBC televised version, Maggie Smith stars as the petulant woman who loves having money and men at her fingertips. Her father is the one who thought up the genius test, and when she falls for an Egyptian doctor, she fears telling him about it. She needn't fear, for his mother made him promise to conduct a similar test with any woman he wanted to marry. Off they both go to see if they can each pass the test!
The Millionairess a funny story, and this one's infinitely better than the 1960 film version. In the original, a lot of the plot is cut out so Peter Sellars can have more screen time (big surprise), and there's an added twist that's incestuous: Sellars also plays the role of her father. In this one, you just get to focus on Maggie Smith and her hilariously spoiled, naïve attitude.
Shaw's feminist treatise
bkoganbing16 November 2017
Watching The Millionairess my mind wandered back to a few other plays by George Bernard Shaw and the one that came closest to this is Major Barbara. Many of the ideas that lead character Epifania has could have come from the mouth of Edward Undershaft.
But being a woman this puts a whole different dimension to it. Shaw was born during the Victorian Age when women were put on a pedestal, but had few legal rights on either side of the pond. Our Creator/Deity may have made women different, but he did endow the same percentage of them with the same quotient of intelligence. I always thought that the crux of feminism was that group of the female population who did not like the roles assigned them, had the intelligence to see it and the will to do something about it.
Maggie Smith is such a woman as Epifania. She's got a husband in James Villiers who is cheating with Patricia Smith. That's OK because she's got the indolent Charles Gray on the side. But when he makes a crack about her sainted father she loses it good and Gray goes down a flight of stairs. More hurt in the dignity than anything else.
The nearest doctor around is an Egyptian immigrant played by Tom Baker and the two are intrigued by each other and put themselves to a money making test. It's what happens in the testing and with each that The Millionairess tells its story.
When The Millionairess opened it must have shocked British sensibilities. Just the idea of one of their wealthiest female citizens kanoodling with a Moslem doctor would have made the most complacent soul get alert. Just remember at the close of the last century how some felt about Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. But Maggie Smith knows her mind.
Maggie Smith leads a fine ensemble cast in this production of The Millionairess. She is surely the daughter Edward Undershaft the self made munitions tycoon would like to have had.
Who would have thought George Bernard Shaw was a secret feminist?
But being a woman this puts a whole different dimension to it. Shaw was born during the Victorian Age when women were put on a pedestal, but had few legal rights on either side of the pond. Our Creator/Deity may have made women different, but he did endow the same percentage of them with the same quotient of intelligence. I always thought that the crux of feminism was that group of the female population who did not like the roles assigned them, had the intelligence to see it and the will to do something about it.
Maggie Smith is such a woman as Epifania. She's got a husband in James Villiers who is cheating with Patricia Smith. That's OK because she's got the indolent Charles Gray on the side. But when he makes a crack about her sainted father she loses it good and Gray goes down a flight of stairs. More hurt in the dignity than anything else.
The nearest doctor around is an Egyptian immigrant played by Tom Baker and the two are intrigued by each other and put themselves to a money making test. It's what happens in the testing and with each that The Millionairess tells its story.
When The Millionairess opened it must have shocked British sensibilities. Just the idea of one of their wealthiest female citizens kanoodling with a Moslem doctor would have made the most complacent soul get alert. Just remember at the close of the last century how some felt about Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. But Maggie Smith knows her mind.
Maggie Smith leads a fine ensemble cast in this production of The Millionairess. She is surely the daughter Edward Undershaft the self made munitions tycoon would like to have had.
Who would have thought George Bernard Shaw was a secret feminist?
All about Maggie
bart679 September 2016
I have read the first two reviews of this play and unfortunately would bore a reader if I did the same, the reviews already submitted are as accurate as I could have said it, so I will focus on one cast member in particular - the one and only Maggie Smith! On the day of my birth, Maggie was 31, so by the time I would be interested in film/theatre Maggie would be cast as a senior figure and not in roles that would make her a young mans pin up girl.
However - as my own years roll on my desire for nostalgia along with technology making it so accessible, I have been rolling back the years to see the difference in my interpretation of film etc..
I could not believe the impact Maggie had on me in her role as Epifania, the longer the play rolled the more I realised just how stunning Maggie was and she was 38 when this play was filmed! As we age the only organ we posses that doesn't are our eyes, even in her now 80's, Maggie's eyes are always the first thing you are drawn to, but in this wonderfully chaotic play, Maggie is playing a hard, soulless woman and as usual delivers a 10/10, however, in scenes that the camera focused on Maggie, a metamorphosis takes place in front of your very own eyes and you see a beauty in those deeply set pools of warmth like precious jewels just below the surface of an ocean of snow white china!
To aspire today to what Maggie was in this play, an actress would have to be wearing less cloth than a cosy for a stamp and more make up than a decade order for the clown department of a travelling circus - Maggie, with barely the sight of a stocking covered ankle, radiated appeal that modern day aspiration can merely dream of!
As Epifania is such a cold hard character, I suggest reader that you pause a scene where Maggie is full screen head and shoulders, detach from Epifania a few moments and really look at Maggie - she was beautiful!
The Millionairess? - 10/10! I loved it....
However - as my own years roll on my desire for nostalgia along with technology making it so accessible, I have been rolling back the years to see the difference in my interpretation of film etc..
I could not believe the impact Maggie had on me in her role as Epifania, the longer the play rolled the more I realised just how stunning Maggie was and she was 38 when this play was filmed! As we age the only organ we posses that doesn't are our eyes, even in her now 80's, Maggie's eyes are always the first thing you are drawn to, but in this wonderfully chaotic play, Maggie is playing a hard, soulless woman and as usual delivers a 10/10, however, in scenes that the camera focused on Maggie, a metamorphosis takes place in front of your very own eyes and you see a beauty in those deeply set pools of warmth like precious jewels just below the surface of an ocean of snow white china!
To aspire today to what Maggie was in this play, an actress would have to be wearing less cloth than a cosy for a stamp and more make up than a decade order for the clown department of a travelling circus - Maggie, with barely the sight of a stocking covered ankle, radiated appeal that modern day aspiration can merely dream of!
As Epifania is such a cold hard character, I suggest reader that you pause a scene where Maggie is full screen head and shoulders, detach from Epifania a few moments and really look at Maggie - she was beautiful!
The Millionairess? - 10/10! I loved it....
She is the meanest person in England. Epifania: That is why I also am the richest.
Sylviastel18 December 2018
Dame Maggie Smith was terrific in this television adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play, "The Millionairess." She is a true scene stealer. The filmed version of the play is somewhat dated with time although most audiences don't have the patience like they used too. Shaw delivered some witty lines for Smith's Epifania, the richest woman in England. Smith does a terrific job in making you feel sorry for her too at point. If you need a taste of Shaw, this version is one of the better BBC versions that aired on television in the seventies and eighties.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
