Review: Washington Stage Guild's MAJOR BARBARA Shines as Only Shaw Can

When you're heading into town for a play by George Bernard Shaw, it's best to keep in mind this salient fact: Shaw is to political debate what the Keystone Cops are to the police procedural. Any Shaw play is chock full of mayhem of the highest intellectual order, with the most chaotic twists and witty verbal pratfalls imaginable.

The Washington Stage Guild's current production of Shaw's Major Barbara, given a solid staging here under the able directorship of Steven Carpenter, runs rings around a whole world of ideas, metaphysical, physical, you name it-with the odd reference here and there to the study of Greek (which Shaw, apparently, loves to diss. Being a Greek scholar, I take exception-but back to the matter at hand...).

The main attraction for plays like this is that Shaw has a way of writing roles for women who are not just strong and independent, but complex. Our Barbara is seen first in the role of a classic goodie two shoes-but she is then given room to grow and contradict herself, adopting views that seem diametrically opposite to the ones we first saw in her. Shaw, of course, makes sure that we understand her apparent change of heart and mind as perfectly consistent with her character-which we had misjudged from the start.

Emelie Faith Thompson shines as the exuberant title character Barbara Undershaft, whose smart Salvation Army uniform creates the illusion of firm resolve. Her wit and resourcefulness have enabled her to rise to the rank of Major in the organization, but of course Shaw isn't about to let her parade around in her virtue for long. Enter her long-lost father, Andrew Undershaft (the gruff and charming Stephen Patrick Martin), who challenges her to her very foundations. The ensuing debates begin in a drawing room, move to the yard of the Salvation Army, and end-in a move so ironic it can only be Shaw-at a shining, fully modern munitions factory.

Is there romance? Of course-but with a twist. Barbara's fiancée, Adolfus Cusins, the Greek geek, is eventually offered a position at the munitions factory; this being Shaw, of course, the transition from academe to war machine seems perfectly natural in the end. Never mind the disturbing, surface fact of congenial people producing killing machines by the score, it's all perfectly sensible in Shaw's world.

The supporting cast here provides brilliant comic counterpoint throughout the play, transitioning from upper class twits to cockney street urchins with ease. Laura Giannarelli leads the crew, first as the imperiously absurd Lady Britomart, then as the Salvation Army regular Rummy Mitchens. Hunter Ringsmith, meanwhile, alternates between the loquacious Charles Lomax and the cynical bum, Snobby Price (the poor, in Shaw's world, know all too well how to play up misery because it's good for box office-and donations).

My advice for folks coming out for a bit of Shaw: by the conclusion of this play your head is likely to ache if you try to make sense of it all. Given the wonderful star turns here, rather than exhaust yourself trying to make sense, let alone keep track of the characters' arguments, my advice is to let Shaw's puppets do their dallying and enjoy the sheer spectacle of it. Because in this spartan staging, the verbal thrusts and parries are precisely the thing, and the cast can certainly keep track of where they are, even if we can't.

Production Time: 3 hours, 15 minutes, with 2, 10-minute intermissions.

Production Photo: Emelie Faith Thompson and Justino Brokaw. Photo by Christopher O. Banks.

Major Barbara will be onstage through December 11, at the Undercroft Theatre, located in the basement of the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W..