MAJOR BARBARA by George Bernard Shaw (Shaw). At the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake. Runs in rep to October 19. $50-$110, stu/srs mats $24-$55. 1-800-511-7429. See listings. Rating: NNN
Is a good deed done by a morally reprehensible person still good?
That’s a central question in Shaw’s Major Barbara, one of the playwright’s most cleverly argued scripts and one that’ll have you often questioning your loyalties over the course of a good production.
Director Jackie Maxwell’s version for the Shaw Festival is certainly that, given the performances of its three leads: Nicole Underhay as Barbara, Graeme Somerville as her academic fiance, Adolphus Cusins, and Benedict Campbell as her estranged father, Andrew Undershaft.
The key conflict in terms of this trio is that Barbara is an officer in the Salvation Army and her father is a major munitions manufacturer whose work by nature is intended to blow humankind to kingdom come. When Barbara’s superior (Jenny L. Wright) accepts a donation from Undershaft, who defines his religion as “millionaire,” she loses faith in the Army’s means to its end, if not its goals.
Underhay, always a delight to watch onstage, makes us warm to a woman who begins in a state of spiritual security – her conversion of the surly, violent Bill Walker (James Pendarves) is a little dramatic gem – before moving on to disillusionment and finally belief, again, when she finds a new humanitarian calling.
Somerville, who grows from a tentative innocent in the midst of commanding, opinionated figures, and Campbell, whose humour is always tinged with the sardonic, are just as strong. Like Underhay, they give a clear reading of the text and the contrasting arguments Shaw puts forward.
Campbell is especially deft at allowing us to see, later in the play, a side of Undershaft that makes him more sympathetic, not quite the Machiavelli or Mephistopheles Cusins half-humorously labels him when the pair argue. In fact, the debates between the two men often seem more central to the production than those between father and daughter.
None of the three is simply a talking head they’re fully developed characters whose emotions are as potent as their arguments.
Some of the other roles aren’t as fully fleshed out, either in the writing or the performing, but Laurie Paton’s Lady Britomart Undershaft, the socialite forced to raise three children without the help of a husband, is equal parts magisterial and droll.
