Jimmy Jeong

Arms And The Man | Joshua Delledonne is generally excellent in Studio Theatre's Major Barbara.

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Major Barbara
Timms Centre for the Arts
Thursday, February 5 - Saturday, February 14

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MAJOR BARBARA
Directed by Jim Mezon. Written by George Bernard Shaw. Timms Centre for the Arts (University of Alberta). To Feb 14 (7:30pm). Tickets available through TIX on the Square (420-1757/tixonthesquare.ca) or the Timms box office.
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Major Barbara rolled onto the Timms Centre stage some 16 days late.

Sure, it’s still relevant; I doubt anyone will live to see the day when George Bernard Shaw’s witticisms and cracks at the perceived moral backbone of our society won’t smart from the truth of it all. But in the world’s new Obama-induced glow, the persuasive conviction in the power and purity of money Shaw gives to British arms magnate Andrew Undershaft (Joshua Dalledonne) seems just slightly less cutting than it might have when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were running around the White House. Cheney may not have put it as eloquently as Andrew, but he could very well have turned on the UN and huffed, “Play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.”

However, the wounds of the last eight years are not easily forgiven nor forgotten, which makes Undershaft’s testament that big business runs the government, while his son Stephan (Mathew Hulshof) wrangles against him, ever-stimulating (and ever-depressing) to watch. If you’re floating so high in your optimism bubble that Shaw’s words can’t bring you down, the cast — especially Dalledonne as the aging Andrew — deliver them with such passion and aplomb you can’t help but be shaken from the hopeful haze.

Dalledonne steps onto the multi-levelled stage, his presence calming a slightly nervous start, as Andrew returns to see his family for the first time in years in order to settle the matter of his children’s inheritances. To get to know his estranged offspring better, he agrees to visit his daughter Barbara (Tess Degenstein) at work as a major in the Salvation Army ... if she agrees to visit his arms factory, which, like her brother, she disapproves of. Each is fairly certain they’ll recruit the other to their respective cause.

At the Salvation Army shelter, we get to know many a player from various economic, social, religious, and educational backgrounds and beliefs, each one getting the opportunity to say their piece and, in so doing, expose one piercing truth after another. Shaw’s play is basically a philosophical haberdashery, with principles being tested at every turn and turned at every test.

Adolphus Cusins (Branden Martin), a scholar and Barbara’s fiancé, is particularly curious when it comes to different philosophical perspectives. Martin’s performance is both goofy and smart, carving out his own sharp space in the face of Dalledonne’s domineering capitalist. Once it comes time for Adolphus to examine his own views on war, faith, and power, when Andrew offers the Undershaft company to him, you can see his gears churning up onstage as he grapples with the possibilities and the consequences.

The lighting and stage direction only serve to emphasize the weight of those consequences. Shadows lift slowly in the Undershaft home to reveal a long line of family portraits, not the impressionistic blobs they first appear to be — and the lady of the house, guarding her home with sentinel-like composure. And when the shadows fall again beneath a blood red sky, leaving a giant cannon and Adolphus to their colliding destinies, the effect is chilling.

Director Jim Mezon, a Shaw expert, has pulled off an expert production. Now, if only the next four years can turn Major Barbara’s themes into unrecognizable gibberish, that would be swell. I doubt it, though.