Candida

George Bernard Shaw categorized his 1894 play "Candida" as one of his "plays pleasant," and the production that opened at Center Stage last night is exceedingly pleasant indeed.Staged by associate artistic director Rick Davis, in his Center Stage directorial debut, this compactly composed account of a love triangle is presented with near-perfect casting and swift pacing that accentuates the comic nuances in Shaw's pyrotechnic prose.The points of the play's romantic triangle consist of: The Rev. Morell, a Christian socialist minister played by Richard Poe as a self-satisfied clergyman who can't speak a simple declarative sentence without making itsound like a sermon; his wife, the lovely and efficient Candida, played by Joyce O'Connor as a clever flirt capable of bending any man's will to her own, and Benjamin White as the lovesick poet, Marchbanks, a social misfit whose infatuation with Candida threatens to turn the Morell household upside down.