Who: Marsha Mason, Brian Cox
What: Special benefit reading of Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar
Where: Bucks County Playhouse
When: Tuesday, September 1, $25 in advance, $35 day of show, 7:00
Why: “The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post,” George Bernard Shaw claimed, and he had just such an epistolary relationship with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, aka Mrs. Pat, an actress who appeared in several of his plays and for whom Shaw created the role of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. Their letters, which encompass forty years, were published in 1952, two years after Shaw’s death, and actor, director, and playwright Kilty adapted their exchanges for the stage in 1957. On September 1, Bucks County Playhouse will be hosting a livestreamed virtual reading of the play, with four-time Oscar and Grammy and Emmy nominee Marsha Mason and Emmy and two-time Olivier Award winner Brian Cox, directed by Obie and Drama Desk winner Mark Brokaw. Mason and Cox join a parade of stars who’ve taken on the roles: The play came to New York City in 1960, starring Katharine Cornell as Mrs. Pat and Brian Aherne as Shaw, was made into a 1964 television movie with Zoe Caldwell and Barry Morse, and was turned into a 1981 film with Jane Alexander and Edward Herrmann.

Marsha Mason and Brian Cox star in virtual benefit reading of Dear Liar

The reading translates wonderfully to Zoom, with Mason (The Goodbye Girl, Chapter Two) and Cox (Rat in the Skull, Succession) performing from where they are sheltering in place. The two are an utter delight to watch; one of the toughest parts of getting online plays to work is for the actors to make a connection not only with the audience but with each other, and Mason and Cox accomplish that with an infectious enthusiasm; they are truly enjoying every minute of being together, even though they are in different locations, and the viewer can’t help but become part of the rapturous celebration of the written word. Kilty structured the play so it’s not merely a reading of letters but a fabulous conversation between two people with rather large egos, with occasional narration. “All I ask is to have my own way in everything,” Shaw commands. Mrs. Pat explains, “Oh, when you are tender like this, a thousand cherubs peek out from under your purple and black wings. Oh, it’s getting difficult not to love you more than I ought to love you. Offend me, quickly, to pull me together again but don’t come here.” They discuss theater, America, the casting of Henry Higgins, age, jealousy, illness, libel, the publication of these very letters, and their families in a thrilling battle of the sexes, gleefully directed by Brokaw (How I Learned to Drive, Heisenberg), who cheerfully plays around with Zoom boxes.

Mason is a delight as Mrs. Pat, whom Shaw calls Stella, taking a slightly more subtle approach than Cox, whose charismatic portrayal of Shaw, whom Mrs. Pat calls Joey, is gloriously bombastic. He can barely contain himself within his Zoom square while Mason watches him ever so eagerly, perhaps having even more fun than we are. Cox has been a pandemic all-star; the New York City resident has been spending time at his Columbia County country house, where he did a magnificent dramatic reading of a section of James Joyce’s Ulysses for Symphony Space’s Virtual Bloomsday on Broadway, sitting outside near the woods, wearing a Panama hat, and involved his wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, and sons Orson and Torin in Melis Aker’s hysterical short play Fractio Panis for the Homebound Project, which should land them their own family reality show. (When Shaw mentions in Dear Liar that a doctor has “stabbed in the seat” to cure him of a sickness, it recalls Cox’s demands for an “ass thermometer” in Fractio Panis.) The Dear Liar reading benefits the Bucks County Playhouse Pandemic Campaign; tickets are $25 in advance and $35 the day of the performance.