Why would most producers rather cut their throats than put on a play by George Bernard Shaw? It is easy enough to see why this whimsically predictable “anti-romantic comedy” from 1894 has fallen out of fashion, but it still contains teasing hints of mature Shaw and is directed by Brigid Larmour with a refreshing straightforwardness that avoids parodic knowingness.
The plot is a mere trifle. Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary, hides in the bedroom of a Bulgarian heiress, Raina, during a war – an event that causes consternation when Sergius, her swaggering cavalry-officer fiance, finds out. As so often, Shaw’s trick is to invert stereotypes. As a practical soldier, Bluntschli finds chocolates more use than cartridges in the heat of battle and the heroic Sergius turns out to be a quixotic idiot.
But the supposedly sexless Shaw lends the scenes between Raina and Bluntschli an erotic tension that prefigures Man and Superman. Raina’s maid, Louka, who points out that service degrades the employer as much as the employed, is one of those fiercely independent spirits so beloved by Shaw.
Rebecca Brower’s stripped-down set shrewdly sidesteps Balkan realism, and the women are especially good. Hannah Morrish admirably captures the tension between Raina’s posturing romanticism, learned from an excess of opera-going, and the flushed excitement of real passion, while Jill McAusland’s Louka is like a ticking time-bomb. The best of the men is Pete Ashmore, whose Bluntschli is a nice mix of brisk pragmatism and suppressed idealism. Even minor Shaw, which this is, is better than no Shaw at all.
- At Watford Palace theatre until 22 October. Box office: 01923 225671.
