If you put Mahatma Gandhi and Dick Cheney in a room together with George Bernard Shaw, it would be hard to predict who would emerge wearing a shawl and who might be carrying a hunting rifle. In Major Barbara, Shaw anticipates the military-industrial complex, and he almost has us rooting for a plowshares-to-swords philosophy. Such is the scope of Shaw's dramatic capacity that he can still send heads spinning 109 years after setting forth this socio-economic satire.
Surprisingly enough, ACT is only now paying its first visit to Major Barbara in its nearly half-century history. The intellectual muscle and stately manner of Shaw's play befit ACT's persona, and this co-production with Theatre Calgary succeeds in filling the stage with both scope of production and the thoughtful intensity of delivery.
There's no escaping the fact that the first act is thick with exposition needed to set up the verbal fireworks that come after the intermission. But Shavian wit still has abundant opportunity to assert itself, most broadly in the form of Lady Britomart Undershaft, who could be a close relative of Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell. Played with haughty assurance by Kandis Chappell, Lady Undershaft completes any questions with preemptive answers as she goes about her mission of securing sufficient income for her grown daughters. This requires the unsavory business of engaging with her estranged husband to secure the necessary funds.
Lord Undershaft, played with a Mephistophelian twinkle by Dean Paul Gibson, just happens to be an arms merchant whose allegiance is to the highest bidder. While his family tut-tuts at his amorality, they accept his largesse. Their opinions have no intellectual value to him, except in the case of daughter Barbara, whose mission with the Salvation Army to feed the hungry provides him a challenge worthy of his time. He sees a form of religious bribery in every piece of bread that the Salvation Army hands out, and his readily accepted offer of a sizable donation throws Barbara off her righteous path.
In the early scenes, Gretchen Hall creates a steely Barbara secure in her beliefs, and she retains this strength even as she becomes an intense observer of the moral drama playing out around her. Other than Undershaft himself, the men in Barbara's life are more milquetoast than masculine, but they are amusingly assayed by Stafford Perry as her brother and Nicholas Pelczar as her fiance.
Director Dennis Garnhum's production ratchets up several notches after the intermission as aerial bombs hang in Daniel Ostling's set like chandeliers at a munitions factory, while Gibson's Undershaft commandeers the stage with a riveting display of mercenary logic that is both seductive and repellant. That Shaw's progressive social views are so well known helps provide context for the unnerving collisions of ideas. "Blood and Fire" is the Salvation Army's motto, and as Undershaft notes, it's a credo he is all too happy to adopt.
Major Barbara will run at ACT through Feb. 2. Tickets are $20-$140. Call 749-2228 or go to act-sf.org.