The play is a satirical allegory about an attempt to create a utopian society on a Polynesian island that has recently emerged from the sea.

[1] The preface, in which Shaw appears to advocate the killing of useless individuals in a future society, has been considered to be distasteful by several commentators.

[2] East Asian princess Prola and a priest Pra, decide to join with two European couples in a sexually communal "superfamily" to create a utopian community on an uninhabited island that has just emerged from the sea in an obscure outpost of the British Empire.

He is drawn into its idiosyncratic mores, eventually enthusiastically embracing the polygamous lifestyle by mating with Maya and Vashti and producing two children.

The published version included a preface in which Shaw appeared to advocate the efficient mass killing of "useless" persons.

Shaw speaks about the creation of the Cheka in the Soviet Union, which he asserts was necessary to deal with counter-revolutionaries and eliminate "lazy" individuals.

They are 'the four lovely phantasms who embody all the artistic, romantic and military ideals of our cultured suburbs,' to wit, 'Love, Pride, Heroism and Empire.

[8] In 1936, the reviewer of the published version in the Times Literary Supplement wrote that, "In all the play and preface nothing has been said but that at the price of bloody tyranny we might achieve a set of social values different from those now held.

"[10] Shaw's biographer Michael Holroyd notes that when the play was revived in the 1990s many critics expressed distaste, with Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph claiming to be "nauseated" after reading the preface.

Benedict Nightingale in The Times said that it communicated "intellectual poison and death" and Michael Coveney in The Observer stated "No wonder the play went down well in Nazi Germany".