Can good people
make war on war? Or will good people always be the instruments of
evil in this world? If you think this subject can't be the theme of
a comedy, you don't know Bernard Shaw or Major Barbara. It's a brilliant
satire, a touching tragedy, a multitude of authentic and gripping
characters and a symphony of ideas worthy of---nay, demanding--our
consideration in this day and age one hundred years after Major Barbara
was first performed. |
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The
all-star cast will carry you away with paradox and poetry. Linda
Roper plays the idealistic Major Barbara Undershaft,
a
Salvation Army convert striving to save people's souls with
a strength of personality inbred in her by her mother, the
imperious Lady Britomart
(Deborah Warren). Barbara faces a crisis of conscience when
she discovers that her work depends on charity furnished
by commercial enterprises
-- liquor and guns -- antithetical to her ideals, the latter
evil appearing in the person of her amoral father, Andrew
Undershaft (Chris Bailey).
Barbara's fiance, Adolphus Cusins (Justin Waldo), an academic,
intellectual and a "collector of religions", finds himself being beguiled by both
Barbara and her father, drawn to succeed to the head of the horrible
armaments business as a way to "make war on war." The hypocrisy of all
this is illustrated by the down and out Salvation Army wards
and their warders (played by Pamela Waldo, John Stobaeus, Bruce
Colbert, Seraphina
Mallon-Breiman, Katherine Reich and Dean Schaumbach). The cast
is rounded out by Dorothy and Damien Toman, playing Barbara's
siblings, the indolent
Sarah and the super-serious Stephen, with Adam Alberts as Sarah's
bumbling beau. Lou Ludwig cares for the family as butler Morrison. |