‘Major Barbara’ Displays Wit of APT, G.B. Shaw

Ideologies collideand the morality of money is much debated in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, American PlayersTheatre's final offering this season. Director David Frank, also APT's artisticdirector, has trimmed some snarls from the Shavian narrative, resulting in abrighter performance wrapping an otherwise knotted, sociological debate.

War profiteer AndrewUndershaft (Jonathan Smoots) and daughter Barbara (Colleen Madden), a SalvationArmy major, find they have conflicting responses to one of poverty's moraldilemmas: Is society better served by providing people with profitablemunitions factory jobs or by saving people's souls “with a Bible in one handand a slice of bread in the other”? The pair agrees to test the thesis byvisiting each other's enterprises and letting the evidence be the judge.

In betweendeclaration and denouement, we meet Undershaft's family, which colors thedebate with both style and substance. Estranged wife Lady Britomart (Sarah Day)seeks money from her husband so daughters Barbara and Sarah (Hillary Clemens)can respectively marry Adolphus Cusins (Jim DeVita), a poor academician, andCharles Lomax (Darragh Kennan), a foppish dandy and wealthy landowner. Theresulting debates skewer the period's sacred cows in Shaw's usual wittyfashion.

APT veterans Day,Madden, Smoots and DeVita once again offer top-notch performances, with DeVitamaking even more noise than usual with his big Salvation Army bass drum. MattSchwader stands out as Bill Walker, who wanders drunkenly into the SalvationArmy shelter looking for trouble, only to storm out after Undershaft donates£5000, convinced that social charities really rely on the wealthy for survival.

Well, of course theydo. In Shawas in lifeheroes are villains, villains heroes and turnabout israrely fair play.