On Broadway

Off-Broadway

Ticket Numbers

Corrections or additions?

Critic: Simon Saltzman. Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on February

23, 2000. All rights reserved.

Broadway Review: `Arms and the Man’

Written in 1894 and set in the late 19th century,

during

the time of the Serbo-Bulgarian war, "Arms and the Man," is

a double-edge sword. While cleverly penned to discredit the myths

of war and its warriors, George Bernard Shaw’s fourth play (and first

success), also rebukes social protocol and romantic insincerity. One

of the most astonishing elements of Roger Rees’s new staging for the

Roundabout Theater Company is the set designed by Neil Patel. Painted

onto the sepia-toned curved walls of the handsome revolving set is

a sprawling map of the besieged region — the same towns, rivers

and territories (boundaries change, of course, with every decade)

that we have been reading about in today’s news.

In Shaw’s lilting, lyrical, anti-militaristic farce, romance comes

first, closely pursued by comedy. But ironically, we also watch the

giddy old-fashioned action from the perspective of our knowledge of

current events. Tragic as these events may be, wouldn’t Shaw be

delighted?

The play’s formidable backdrop does not detract from the presence

of effervescent charm that resides in a maiden’s bedchamber, namely

Katie Finneran, who plays Raina, daughter of the richest and most

prominent family in Bulgaria. If Finneran’s is the performance that

tickles us the most in this sweet, but unsurprising, production, the

others, under Rees’s direction, deliver — with varying degrees

of success — the fresh and impudent behavior that suits the three

joyful acts (here combined into two acts) of this purposeful nonsense.

The cast is a rather fresh-faced lot, perhaps not as daringly engaging

as other casts I have seen in this popular play. (I’m still ready

to chuckle remembering Raul Julia, Kevin Kline, Glenne Headly, Louis

Zorich, and Kaitlin Clark in a riotous, 1985 Circle in the Square

production, directed by John Malkovich.)

With the exception of the first half of Act I, when everyone seemed

to be shouting at each other as if they were warming up for a

performance

of Oscar Straus’ operetta version "The Chocolate Soldier,"

and during which the actors appeared to be acting in as many styles

as there are varieties of chocolates in a five-pound box, the play

and its players ultimately provide the intended two hours of

amusement.

Only after you begin to question whether this is the way for an

ensemble

to act out Shaw’s comical inquiry into the various and variable ethics

that dictate man’s behavior, can you appreciate the joke of so many

individualized acting styles. Rees’s concept has a Shavian shiver

to it, and, as such, offers a treat to those too often lulled by mere

consistency of style.

Of course this freewheeling approach would never work without actors

able to sustain the grand illusion of their own half-mad delusions.

Henry Czerny has a very contemporary American deportment as the

sweet-toothed

Swiss mercenary Captain Bluntschli. It is for Bluntschli, who would

rather have chocolates than bullets in his pockets, to put to rest

the myth of war and its heroes. In Czerny, we have a rather unusual

and un-dashing, but delightful, Bluntschli whose bedside brand of

cynical insecurity puts to rest any number of cliches about heroic

behavior. When the hungry, tired, and frightened fugitive takes

temporary

refuge from pursuing soldiers among the ruffles in a maiden’s boudoir,

he uses the only ammunition he has left: "Would you like to see

me cry?"

If we missed the outrageous pomp, circumstance, and

heel-clicking that usually personifies Major Sergius Saranoff,

"the

hero of the hour, the idol of the regiment," and Raina’s fiancee,

Paul Michael Valley’s display of none-too-subtle stupidity and his

imposing countenance in braided uniform and polished boots are its

own rewards. That is, until he finally opens his mouth and declares,

"Everything I think is mocked by everything I do." Valley

falls short when it comes making Serguis’ airs of narcissism and phony

gallantries as funny as the playwright intended, but he makes Sergius’

cautious bravado an endearing trait.

For a short time, I was a little nonplused by Finneran’s flaky

reactions,

both in speech and behavior. But this irresistibly clever, lovely

actor soon had me laughing aloud at every delicious turn of phrase.

Tom Bloom was appropriately dense as the old Major. Robin Weigert

had some insinuating moments as the cunningly sensual maid. Michael

Potts, as Nicola, the manservant with a cockney accent and an

attitude,

and Sandra Shipley, as Raina’s mother Catherine, bent on modernizing

her home with an electric servant’s bell, were skillful in their more

detached ebullience.

Some historical trivia: Shaw took the title of the play from the first

line of Virgil’s "Aeneid," which reads in Latin, "Arma

virum que cano" — "Of arms and the man I sing." In

the "Aeneid," Virgil praises the glory of military work; thus

Shaw’s title is a tongue-in-cheek tribute in the form of a comedy

that debunks all notion of military glory. Two stars.

— Simon Saltzman