NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario -- There's a note on the Shaw Festival Web site connecting Terrence Rattigan with Oscar Wilde, Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward. "Punished for the direction of their hearts," says British director Dominick Dromgoole, they "revenged themselves on the society that oppressed them by becoming its foremost chroniclers for 70 years."

He means they were gay and had to hide it -- but that gave their art both darkness and insight. This is a useful corrective to the theater history truism that the mid-20th-century theater typified by Rattigan, Maugham and Coward was emotionally moribund. It was that theater -- and G.B. Shaw's theater, too -- that John Osborne famously electrified in 1956 with his revolutionary "Look Back in Anger."

But one of the services of the Shaw Festival, which takes as its mandate plays written during the lifetime of its namesake (1856-1950) or written more recently about that era, is to remind us that there was value to what Osborne supplanted. This year's best case in point is Rattigan's "After the Fall," a poignant state of the nation play -- not a big political panorama such as we get from David Hare (and used to get from Shaw), but political in implication, even in the absence of politics.

Mainly, the Shaw is in the business of entertainment, but it works out that "After the Dance," "Wonderful Town" and "Getting Married," the three shows a Post-Gazette theater trip saw a few weeks ago, form a sort of seminar on the relations between the sexes, especially marriage. And many of this year's other eight offerings chime in, including "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "A Little Night Music," "The Stepmother," "The Little Foxes," etc.

Yes, those stiff-upper-lip dramatists had plenty to say, and the fine Shaw Festival acting ensemble reveals what a rich era it was. But three plays are just a taste. I'm looking forward to a return visit in a few weeks to the tourist Shangri-la of NOTL, in the heart of Canadian fruit and wine country, for the full theatrical banquet.

Frankly, I feared Rattigan's play would be a soppy moral melodrama such as the mid-century angry young men condemned, but it's much more.

Set in 1938 on the eve of the cataclysm of World War II, it focuses on a pleasure-seeking "lost generation." Young enough not to have died in the futile trenches of WWI, they are casualties of that war nonetheless, their energy and capability sapped by nihilism. We feel the analogies between their lives and those of the nation and the world in almost every line.

Recovering a play that was never a great hit, probably already seeming old news as the war came rushing on, also recovers what it tells us about individuals left in the backdraft of history. Visiting the Shaw is also a recurring recovery of the past: Wisps of previous plays cling to the stable acting company, catching us in a web of remembrance, motifs and themes that reflect our own lives as much as that of an era.

The desperate party-goers of "After the Dance" don't talk much about the larger world, but we can supply that, knowing that World War II is about to break over them. I was most moved by Deborah Hay, as the desperate woman who sees her husband succumb to a willful young muse and feels most intensely amid the heedless throng, and by Neil Barclay, as the world-weary hanger-on who has the clearest view of the new world in the offing.

It's no wonder "After the Dance" has such resonance and poignancy: It's directed by the Shaw's former artistic director, Christopher Newton, a great pioneer of mining early 20th-century eras for lessons that speak to us today.

Set in 1935, "Wonderful Town" shares its historic moment with "After the Dance." But the big difference is that this joyous musical is placed in the exotic bohemian backwater of Greenwich Village, USA, where the war was several years further away. Comden and Green's witty lyrics are full of references to forgotten news flashes of the '30s, but as decorative trivia. That distant USA feels like a fictional place to set a musical comedy entertainment.

There was an understudy in "Wonderful Town" for the show's star, the feisty older sister, Ruth, and it was that same Hay. Doubtless the regular Ruth is very good -- there's usually a reason one plays the role and the other understudies. But Hay more than holds her own against the sunny pulchritude of Chilina Kennedy as her sister, Eileen.

And Barclay is back as the colorful Mr. Appopolous, among a half-dozen actors in common in "After the Dance" and "Wonderful Town." Savoring different performances by members of this fine company is one of the pleasures of repertory theater.

The popular objection to Shaw is that he's more polemicist than playwright. I invariably defend him because his dramaturgy is solid, even though he and his characters sure do like to talk. But "Getting Married" really is static, stultified with debate in spite of interesting characters.

On the day of a 1908 wedding, bride and bridegroom get cold feet because of the antiquated legal status of marriage and the relative impossibility of divorce. She objects that the law gives all rights and power to the man; he objects to the same, which means he can be sued for libel for the speeches of his politically crusading wife-to-be.

So the wedding is put on hold, the guests twiddling their thumbs in the church, while her large family and in-laws, including her bishop father, are back in the caterer's room, carrying on a grand debate on marriage and trying to write a new marriage contract.

That's funny enough, and Act 1 is stimulating, with the wonderful Shavian savant figure of the caterer (played by the consummate Michael Ball) showing more wisdom than his social "betters." There are others with their own objections to marriage law, and we realize there is no way to reform the institution to accommodate human variety. The mind-boggling divorce statistics of today may not be proof of the failure of marriage so much as the necessary condition of its continuation.

But Act 2 gets lost in digressions and side debates and a couple of other characters who just don't hold the same interest, except for a deliciously dry and disapproving lawyer turned priest. For once I agree that the brilliant Shaw talks his way into a theatrical morass.

He does find the right solution, though: The young couple slip off, make their own deal and get married quietly, returning to allow all the disputing relatives and unseen wedding guests to enjoy the reception. Talk first and party after is a good formula in life as well as art.

For information on the Shaw Festival, call 1-800-511-SHAW or go to www.shawfest.com. For more details including tickets and accommodations, go to post-gazette.com/theater.