The Marriage-Go-Round

About the show

The Marriage-Go-Round is a 1958 play written by Leslie Stevens. The 1961 film adaptation of the same name, written and produced by Stevens, stars Susan Hayward, James Mason and Julie Newmar, who reprised her role from the play. The play follows a happily married academic couple whose life is upended when a bold young Swedish visitor tries to persuade the husband to father her child. The play was inspired by a suggestion that dancer Isadora Duncan supposedly made to playwright George Bernard Shaw: The two of them should have a child because "with your mind and my body, think what a person it would be!" The play, a sex comedy, was a Broadway theatre success with a run of over 700 performances; it did poorly at the film box office.