The Shaw Festival Theatre Review: Shaw’s Major Barbara
By Ross
A song of salvation draws us into the Shaw Festival‘s solid and engaging production of Major Barbara, written by the festival’s namesake, George Bernard Shaw. This three-act English play, as projected forth across the Royal George Theatre stage on a plain parchment coloured curtain in solid modern type, is an intellectually complex property, exploring the deep complex ideas exploding around morality, social class structures, idealism, pragmatism, and the dynamic of social change while playing with the very current idea of the power of money and war.
More than just a morality play filled to overflowing with ideas, Shaw’s Major Barbara is often viewed as a platform for personal and social debate. Critics have dubbed it as a showcase for Shaw’s sharp social commentary, centered on the moral dilemma faced by Barbara Undershaft, a devout Major in the Salvation Army. Her values and world views are forever upended in the clashing dynamic with her newly returned father, Andrew Undershaft, a wealthy arms manufacturer, whose philosophies shatter and ultimately prompt her to reevaluate her ideals.
First premiered in 1905 and published in 1907, Major Barbara strides forward confidently under the direction of Peter Hinton-Davis (Tarragon’s The Hooves Belonged to the Deer). The modernist platformed stage, created by set and costume designer Gillian Gallow (Shaw’s The Shadow of a Doubt) is deeply complemented by the superb lighting by Bonnie Beecher (Coal Mine’s People, Places and Things). While the play is not the easiest to unpack without slipping into melodrama or dropping into stale lectures on the state of the world, Hinton-David pulls out the social satire with a drumming clarity through strong performances and a well-sung musical framing by composer and sound designer Allen Cole (Shaw’s Alice).
The clash of morals and vantage points rises up on that Brechtian stage, with larger-than-life step-downs to a wide, unadorned debate floor elevated by a few modern white chairs stationed in a triangular shape that escalates the intellectual tension of opposing views and the colliding of ideals. Initially, the play starts out with a witty interaction between mother and son; the Lady Britomart Undershaft, portrayed fiercely by Fiona Byrne (Soulpepper’s Mother’s Daughter) leading her dutiful Stephen Undershaft (Snobby Price), dutifully portrayed by Taurian Teelucksingh (Shaw’s My Fair Lady) through a maze of interjections and advice asking that is as witty and informing as it is hilariously charming.
But the true centrifical force of this play and production starts with the titular character, Barbara Undershaft, strongly embodied by Gabriella Sundar Singh (Shaw’s The Secret Garden), an idealistic Major in the Salvation Army who is engaged to the fabulously well-formed scholar of Ancient Greek, Adolphus Cusins, adeptly portrayed by André Morin (Shaw’s One Man, Two Guvnors). Dynamically opposite her stands the Major’s wealthy absentee father, Andrew Undershaft, forcibly portrayed by Patrick Galligan (Shaw’s On The Razzle), who has been summoned by Lady Undershaft for her daughters’ financial salvation, and in his arrival, the core moral debate is sparked.
The Lady needs to discuss her grown daughters’ income and futures, both Barbara’s and her other daughter, Sarah Undershaft (who also plays Jenny Hill), portrayed cleverly by Lindsay Wu (Shaw’s Snow in Midsummer). Like Barbara, Sarah is engaged to Charles Lomas (who also portrays Bill Walker), played wonderfully well by Sepehr Reybod (Soulpepper/Segal Centre’s English). “Oh, I say,” is the most well-trotted-out line by Charles, a man who won’t come into his own income for some time, and the Lady Undershaft requires her absent husband, who has amassed a large fortune through the manufacturing of machines of war and destruction, to step up and expand his contribution to their livelihood. Backed by the expansive and gorgeously displayed tapestry of flowers and the face of the goddess Persephone, the clashing of ideals is clear and present from the moment Barbara agrees to tour her father’s munitions factory, but only if he first comes to the Salvation Army shelter where Barbara works hard at saving souls through acts of charity and engagement.
From the moment the second act of Major Barbara begins to unfold with the tapestry ascending into the heavens, a glowing cross is revealed, and a counter is placed at the edge of the stage for the more needy characters to engage with one another over a sparse meal and beverage. The iconography of the cross electrifies the complex unwinding, as there is little else to connect with beyond the debate that transpires between these souls in need of a meal. The subplot and these secondary characters are heavy with meaning, but when Undershaft, the wealthy manufacturer of blood and death, makes his way in, a tonal shift occurs that alters the dynamic most powerfully. He is dutifully impressed with the strong and firm Major Barbara, as she forcibly and wisely handles the subplot crew of troubled people who have come to the shelter for salvation. Barbara is patient, sincere, and firm, but Undershaft can’t help but see the caring foundation as something to overcome and debate away. In a strong declaration of supposed support, Undershaft comes to the rescue of the shelter with a large donation check gifted to the grateful Mrs. Baines, played by Patty Jamieson (Shaw’s A Christmas Carol), who accepts the donation that will match another one from a whisky distiller. She accepts the check with grace, despite the roots of his wealth coming from war and destruction, shining a solid, dark light on the play’s moral complexities and conflict.
Here lies the dilemma that lives and is ignited inside the whole of Major Barbara. It flashes before us as we watch the impressive Gabriella Sundar Singh’s face crumble with the realization that money coming from the sales of machines of war and alcohol is being accepted by the Salvation Army, when it goes against everything that Barbara believes in. She is astonished and broken when the supervising officer eagerly accepts the check, forcing the idealistic Barbara to walk away in disillusionment, while the more complicated character of Cusins is filled with disgust for father Undershaft, but also a twisted spark of pleasure, as he was always more in love with Barbara than the Major.
That significant £5,000 donation from Undershaft, despite its morally dubious roots in the weapons trade, is the break that throws the whole spiritual conflict into a fully formed internal battle between cannons and charity. And is the thing that brings us into the third act, formed by two scenes, that unpack the main framing of the whole ferocious debate and moral dilemma, as war heads rise up and overtake the steps of the ‘palace’. Barbara must wage an internalized war within her own sense of self, as the Undershafts arrive and are fully enamored by what Undershaft has manifested at his factory. The reactions from all around are almost unanimous in their disturbing delight, sending tremors of discomfort and disillusionment through Barbara and her worldview. Here is the exact Shaw formula for intellectual debate and emotional recentering, and we stumble ourselves trying to wrap our heads around the moral dilemma that stands so firmly displayed before us.
It’s a complication that Shaw has meticulously crafted in his exceptional Major Barbara, where the purposefully added Christian hymns, courtesy of Cole, fill the air before each scene or act. They underscore the themes and timing, as noted in the speaking and referencing specific dates and holidays—January 5–7, wisely connecting the unwrapping to the Christian holiday references of the Twelfth Night, the Epiphany, and Plough Monday. While the intellectualism and debate structure of Major Barbara is sometimes a challenging stumbling block, like those high steps on both sides of the stage, this Shaw Festival production never seems to falter in its ascent of those very same stairs. It shines out bright like that cross that takes center stage, and those warheads that adorn the side steps. “Don’t be afraid of being a good man,” we are told, but what does that mean in the larger picture and in the horrible truth of an armorist’s faith? Is he the devil or a positive force getting rid of the bribery of bread? Or has his list of the seven deadly sins truly corrupted the incorruptible?
“Blow, Machiavelli, blow,” sings the convert, giving a subtle, twisted nod to Anything Goes, the show going on across town at the Shaw Festival‘s main stage, but in this elegant production, delivered forth with a modern sensibility to Shaw’s democratic intellectualism, Major Barbara finds its own faith in the ringing of the boxing bell and the explosions that go off in our head and in the background. It makes sharp, sarcastic smiles to the art of being a politician, and in the world that we are inhabiting, this reformation is rewarding, with each and every step it takes.
