The Show-Off by George Kelly

The Show-Off Reviews

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  Mohammed Fawzi (BookTuber)

  مسرحية عاشق المظاهر كوميدية أنجليزية-أمريكية من المستوي الكوميدي البريطاني و عجبتني لاني متعود علي الأسلوب ده من حيث اللغة العربية طبعاً
  
  من أهم مميزات الكتاب وجود مقدمة للدكتور مصطفي محمود و ترجمة لا مثيل لها فعلا من الروائع المسرحية(فكرني ب على بيه مظهر) 😅
• 
  Martin Denton

  It's interesting: plays like Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon (1920) feel like vestiges of long ago, while George Kelly's 1924 comedy The Show-Off feels modern and timely. Sure, there are references that date the play: a gadget called a "wireless" is a curiosity; people talk about earning $130 a month, and so on. But the characters that Kelly captures so acutely aren't at all old-fashioned; in fact, they're archetypes for ways of thinking that come off as highly contemporary. And the attitudes that Kelly aptly satirizes here--provincialism vs. get-rich-quick--remain very much with us today
  
  The Show-Off of the play's title is Aubrey Piper, a young man who works as an ordinary clerk at the Pennsylvania Railroad but fancies himself a tycoon-in-the-making. Aubrey is a blowhard, and a liar: he exaggerates his position and his salary and his contributions on the job to impress his girlfriend, a besotted young woman who ought to know better named Amy Fisher. Not that it really matters to Aubrey who his audience is: he's just as apt to tell a perfect stranger that his mother-in-law's house is his own and that she lives there on his graces. When Aubrey gets into an automobile accident, his main concern is that his name is in the papers.
  
  Though Amy is taken in by Aubrey's big talk, the rest of her family is not. Chief among Aubrey's detractors is Amy's outspoken mother, a provincial and unsophisticated woman who shares Aubrey's love of endless, meaningless gab though she'd never realize it let alone admit it. There's no love lost between Aubrey and Amy's father, certainly; likewise, Amy's brother Joe, a would-be inventor who fiddles around with radios and rustproofing formulas, and her sister Clara, the unhappily married wife of a successful businessman, see right through Aubrey's posing.
  
  Kelly messes with his audience by making Aubrey and Mrs. Fisher, who are the most interesting of his characters, also the most unpleasant. They're extreme examples of the All American Types that they exemplify: Kelly holds up a mirror, as 'twere, and lets us laugh at the worst of our national character: either we're pretending to be smarter than we really are, or we're just plain ignorant. Chances are, you know someone just like Aubrey Piper and someone else who reminds you of Mrs. Fisher. These folks aren't going anywhere.
  
  So The Show-Off is funny; but it's also pointed: Kelly messes with us some more by having one of Aubrey's bright ideas pay off at the eleventh hour. He also lets us see that Aubrey's dreams of glory have their romantic aspect: his boundless enthusiasm and Mrs. Fisher's pragmatic skepticism are flip sides of the coin that is American character--we need 'em both.
• 
  الشناوي محمد جبر

  لست عاشقا للمسرح المكتوب إلا لكتاب بعينهم منهم توفيق الحكيم وشكسبير.
  في هذه المسرحية التي تشبه قصة علي بيه مظهر في مصر
  شخصية رئئسية تحب المظاهر تتوالي حولها الأزمات بسبب حب العيش في بيئة ووفق تكاليف بعيدة ت ماما عن إمكانياته
  مسرحية جيدة.