There is no lack of talented actors, designers, directors and choreo­graphers; in fact there is almost a glut of them. We have several very good theatres and plenty that are good enough. Most successful direct­ors today, like many actors, however intellect­ually conventional and uncritical they often seem, are well educated as well as talented. So the dullness of today’s theatre takes some explaining.

Last month I went to two major (and well-received) plays at the National: Howard Brenton’s new Never So Good and Shaw’s Major Barbara of 1905. There was no lack of talent in either production. Never So Good was directed by Howard Davies, with Jeremy Irons at his very best in a sympathetic portrait of Harold “Supermac” Macmillan; Major Barbara was directed by Nicholas Hytner, with the masterly Simon Russell Beale as ­Andrew Undershaft, the Mephistopholean arms manufacturer who explodes the ideals of his Salvationist daughter.

These names are among the brightest and the best in British theatre. And, sure enough, the direction, the supporting cast, the pace, the body language, the lighting, the design, the pyrotechnics, the music and, in Never So Good, the choreography were all extremely accomplished, often outstanding. It’s also true that there are good lines in both plays, and plenty of quite funny ones too. Both deal with interesting social and political subjects, yet both left me cold and slightly bored.

The problem, both in this case and more generally, must lie in the plays themselves — with the playwrights and with the directors’ choices of them. I have always thought Shaw’s plays overrated and Major Barbara is one of his weakest — didactic, crude, verbose and, above all, intellectually incoherent, which is the kiss of death for an outdated polemic. Curiously enough, Simon Russell Beale said recently that both he and Hytner were “Shaw sceptics”. Unfortunately they were not sceptics enough to drop the idea of doing Major Barbara; I have a nasty suspicion they think it “relevant” to questions of poverty and power today. If so, that may be an echo of the institutionalised Left-liberalism which has for so long dominated English theatre.