It’s been 55 years since Irish-born playwright George Bernard Shaw died, but the mark he left on theater and society as a whole has scarcely begun to fade. Shaw, “whose exceptionally long and fecund career as a center of London theatrical and political life is being celebrated beginning tomorrow in a festival of talks, readings and performances at the New York Public Library, titled ‘Man or Superman?'”, was also a particular enigma for fans and detractors alike. “Shaw was cutting a calculated, irresistibly dangerous figure as a firebrand critic, polemicist and soapbox orator long before his plays were first produced in London. It was a fire-breathing persona, stoked over seven decades, that expected, nay demanded, to be caricatured.”