The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “Major Barbara” is an incredibly crisp, engaging example of what the greater Washington D.C. theatre scene has to offer. Director Ethan McSweeny’s interpretation stays true to George Bernard Shaw’s impeccable original text and conveys the author’s pertinent social commentary and finely-tuned wit.
The play, which runs until March 23rd, is being staged at Sidney Harman Hall, in the recently completed Harman Center for the Arts on the corner of Sixth and F Streets near the Verizon Center. The theatre is large, but manages to mantain a comfortable intimacy between the audience and the actors. This intimacy is particularly appreciable in the case of “Major Barbara,” a play that brings together a wide variety of turn-of-the-century British characters, from the street urchin to the society woman. The play tells the story of the Undershafts, a wealthy, well-heeled family whose members have humorously diverse personalities, and their internal struggle to understand each other’s values.
The action takes place in early 20th-century London, a city torn between wealth and stark poverty, and centers around the moral differences between Andrew Undershaft (Ted van Griethuysen), a jovial munitions tycoon, and his daughter Barbara (Vivienne Benesch), an idealistic major in the Salvation Army. In an effort to bridge the gap between their worlds, each agrees to visit the other’s stomping ground: in Barbara’s case, a Salvation Army shelter, and in her father’s, a weapons factory.
James Noone’s carefully designed and dressed sets expertly reproduce an opulent private library, a grimy city shelter and a well-oiled weapons factory. While many of today’s stages lean towards minimalism, it’s refreshing to see actors interact with a set that leaves little to the imagination. Much of the fascinating and often very funny unspoken chemistry between the actors is facilitated by the set and props (particularly in the case of a pillow belonging to Lady Undershaft).
While the various supporting characters are less complex than Barbara and Undershaft, they are crucial to the story for the archetypes they embody (the man about town, scheming matriarch, belligerent drunk, insincere convert, etc.). The cast is well rounded and very polished, hindered only by Kevin O’Donnell’s slightly over-the-top depiction of Charles Lomax, the foppish fiancé of the younger Undershaft daughter.
Barbara’s eventual realization that her beloved organization depends on the insincere donations of industrialists like her father shakes her moral foundations to the core. The play provides another examination of values when the family’s visit to the weapons factory reveals the institution and its surrounding community to be a squeaky-clean exemplar of prosperity and success, despite its deadly purpose. The ensuing discussions and soliloquies speak to anxieties about the income gap, the false ideals of the upper classes and the undeniable power of money–anxieties familiar to contemporary society. “Major Barbara” manages to be thought provoking without becoming disturbing, moralizing without becoming a guilt trip, and entertaining and lively throughout.
