The Millionairess (by George Bernard Shaw) is probably one of the best plays ever written by a man near 80, but it is one of the least satisfactory of Shaw's. It might by now have been thankful for shelf space without aspiring to stage production, had not Katharine Hepburn dared the termagant title role in London last summer and achieved a sensation. As the richest and presumably the most roughshod-riding woman in. England—possessing 30 million pounds and probably 40 million horsepower—she makes every entrance an eruption and every exit a bombardment.
Bullying and aggressive, she is Shaw's symbol of entrenched wealth,...