Paul Miller takes his farewell as artistic director of the Orange Tree Theatre with a rare revival of a play by Bernard Shaw and very enjoyable it is too.
There was only one dissenting boo at the premiere of Arms and the Man in 1894. “I quite agree with you,” said Shaw, “but what are we two against so many?”
He described the play as an anti romantic comedy; but, of course, the very guying could hardly be more romantic; and this is its appeal.
The comedy is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885-1886 when war, the dream of patriots and heroes, is found to be as hollow a sham as love.
Raina, having been brought up on Byron, Pushkin and opera, has had her head stuffed full of romantic ideas about love and war and is shocked when Bluntschli, an enemy soldier, hiding in her bedroom, admits to being a coward and carrying chocolate in his cartridge pouch rather than bullets!
Raina and her fiancé, Sergius, are a parody of romantic idealism. They strike noble attitudes and put on the thrilling voice. Sergius’ cavalry charge against the enemy has made him the hero of the hour and the idol of the regiment. Unlike Bluntschli; he is not a professional soldier; actually, he is more like an operatic tenor.
He used cavalry against machine guns. His action must have brought back memories for Victorian audiences of the disastrous suicidal charge of the light brigade in 1854 in the Crimean War and immortalized by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous poem.
Bluntschli, straight-forward and practical, is a professional soldier, who fights only when he has to and is very glad to get out of it when he can. Challenged to a duel by Sergius, who says he will fight him on horseback and with a sabre, he blandly replies that he will turn up with a machine gun.
Alex Bhat is very funny as the fierce-eyed, swaggering Balkan buffoon but he could and should tone it down a bit. Alex Waldmann’s Bluntschli is nicely understated. Rebecca Collingwood is a delight as Raina who is in love with the chocolate soldier. Jonathan Tafler is perfect as her father.
Shaw in a letter to the actress Ellen Terry wrote: “When I used to read the play, before it was produced, people used not to laugh at it, as they laughed in the theatre. On my honour it was a serious play – a play to cry over if you could only have helped laughing.”
Watching Arms and the Man, whilst a brutal war rages in the Ukraine, gives the satire on war a special resonance.
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