Long Branch long has enjoyed its own special literary pedigree. Such icons of American letters as Norman Mailer, Dorothy Parker and Robert Pinsky were born there. Robert Louis Stevenson and Bret Harte were summertime visitors in the days when the city was a playground for presidents, socialites and captains of industry. So it should come as no surprise that when George Bernard Shaw himself strolls into Amy's Omelette House on a rainy Tuesday night, there's hardly a raised eyebrow.
Perhaps it can be chalked up to the fact that Shaw seems scarcely to have left the stage — that at any moment, the celebrated Irish playwright, critic, activist and advocate for healthy living could very plausibly appear, Elvis-like, and place an order for a western omelette. Indeed, Shaw, who died in 1950 at the age of 94 - and only then after he fell off a ladder — lived a life that straddled America's Civil War and the Korean conflict; the Industrial Revolution and the Atom Age; the era of Oscar Wilde and the Oscar he won for the movie version of "Pygmalion" in 1938.
These days, the immortal George Bernard Shaw is embodied by actor Ames Adamson, here in town to perform the title role in "Engaging Shaw," the comic play by John Morogiello that kicks off a month-long engagement this weekend at New Jersey Repertory Company on downtown Broadway. In fact, he and his fellow actors are the first cast to take up residence in NJ Rep's new guest house for performers — a place colloquially referred to as the "Buffalo Bill House," since it was originally built by Buffalo Bill Cody's business partner in those famous Wild West shows (both Cody and Sitting Bull reportedly stayed in the house and its adjacent guest cottage).The Philly-based Adamson is no stranger to Long Branch, having starred or co-starred in a slew of offerings at NJ Rep - from the one-man "Circumference of a Squirrel" (a play he's performed for four different theaters) to the bizarre ensemble pieces "Tilt Angel" and "Maggie Rose." For "Panama," he crafted five extremely nutty characters, and in the choreographed quick-change "Tour de Farce" he zipped back and forth between another quintet of crazies.
"Jersey has just been better to me than any place else, and the audiences in this state are spectacular," says the former resident of Jersey City, who posits that "if you drink the water in Jersey City for enough years, you can't help but become a Jerseyan."
Enjoying the luxury of a single characterization this time, the red-haired actor (a former photo department manager for Time magazine) has cultivated a Shavian beard for the occasion. The endeavor fills Adamson with some trepidation, harkening back to the end of his run in "Old Clown Wanted," when his facial thicket was so caked with makeup that his attempt at sawing it off found "the whole thing peeling off in one piece — I handed it to the stage manager."
Billed as an "unromantic romantic comedy," the play offers snapshots of the long-term relationship between Shaw and his wife Charlotte Payne-Townshend (Katrina Ferguson), whom the confirmed bachelor met at the country home of their mutual friends, socialist theorists Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Marc Geller and Helen Mutch co-star under the direction of Langdon Brown.According to Adamson, Charlotte was "transformed" by a lecture Shaw had given on the women of Henrik Ibsen's plays, and was impressed by Shaw's own progressive views on women's rights and contributions."Shaw's women speak of what they would do if they were a man — and why," observes the actor, who prepped for his role by immersing himself in such classic Shaw works as "The Devil's Disciple" and "Arms and the Man.""Shaw's just utterly amazing," Adamson says of the author who engendered controversy and remained an ardent fan of Joseph Stalin for much of his life. "A lot of people think he's antiquated, but he took on all these tremendous issues in a way that still makes a lot of people uncomfortable.""Shaw was a "celibate womanizer' who had never allowed himself close personal relationships," Adamson explains. "He was a vegetarian, a teetotaler and non-smoker who almost never got sick, and who claimed that he would have to be sick, incapacitated and immobilized to marry."
"The ironic thing is that when (Charlotte) left him at one point he got ill; catching colds, getting abscesses in his mouth and on his foot, and cracking his head on a cabinet."
As Adamson tells it, the script remains a "work in progress" for which Morogiello has been taking comments from the cast and director.
"Every day we get new pages — I asked him about one line in particular, and a day later he changed the line and added eight more."
"The play's not dark at all; I find it very funny," the actor sums up. "And the name has so many potential meanings."





