The Millionairess
Though Bernard Shaw'sThe Millionairessmay rank among his lesser works, it is given a top-drawer staging in this 1972 BBC production. Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,California Suite) is priceless as Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden, a woman every bit as impossible as her name. Epifania, "a woman brought up on seven figures" is, as her amused lawyer observes, "a comic figure in her misery." Her feckless husband has taken up with a  more affectionate younger woman. Epifania's own "Sunday wife" (Charles Gray fromRocky Horror Picture Show) is an equally worthless chap. But she meets her match in a principled and idealistic English doctor (Tom Baker ofDr. Whofame) who challenges her to transform 35 shillings into her own fortune. The play's farcical first act is best, with the assorted couples and companions descending on the lawyer's office. Things bog down a bit with the introduction of the good doctor, but to watch the incomparable Smith tackle this most juicy of roles as "the most interesting woman in England," for whom money means power, security, and freedom, is "legitimate bliss."--Donald Liebenson