Great Catherine

About

Shaw's 1913 one-act farce imagines the encounter between Catherine the Great and a hapless English officer accidentally delivered to her palace — a comic demonstration that great historical figures, stripped of their mythology, are as ridiculous as anyone else. Shaw uses the historical setting to satirize both Russian autocracy and British military snobbery with cheerful irreverence. The play is brief, entertaining, and requires only a handful of performers; it is one of his most reliable pieces for informal performance.