Man and Superman, Rogue Theater, at the Playground Theater. George Bernard Shaw’s domestic epic is amusing even without its famous philosophic parable, “Don Juan in Hell.” Director Kerstin Broockman has dispensed with that third-act interlude, cut two characters, and streamlined the dialogue, reducing Shaw’s four-hour tour-de-talk to a much more bearable two. The result is a clean look at the mating game that fuels the play’s paradoxes. In Shaw’s mind, women are driven by the Life Force to advance the species, pursuing men and trying to trick them into thinking they control the courtship. But reformer Jack Tanner knows he’s a mere tool in the hands of his artful ward, Ann Whitefield, a passive-aggressive schemestress. Though she seems to waver between revolutionary zealot Tanner and poet Octavius, the outcome is never in doubt–reason enough to keep the production short.
