Theatre: A weapon for the poor

Major Barbara Piccadilly Theatre, London

Major Barbara

Piccadilly Theatre, London

Incredible as it may sound, the work of George Bernard Shaw can still be shocking. Although was written over 90 years ago, and bears the trademark loquaciousness that is now deemed so unforgivably old-fashioned, it addresses two subjects that have yet to become obsolete: poverty and the arms trade. And it does so with typically combative wit. Shaw repeatedly spells out how the manufacture of instruments of death sustains livelihoods, and suggests that a society that feeds its citizens on the profits of slaughter is infinitely preferable to one that lets them starve in the name of moral improvement.

Making this irony-heavy polemic a success on the stage is no easy task and Sir Peter Hall's slow-fuse production takes time to spark intellectual detachment into real spiritedness. The argument is dramatised as a family dispute between a millionaire cannon-maker, Andrew Undershaft, and his daughter Barbara, a gung ho major in the Salvation Army. Each tries to convert the other to their cause with a trip to their respective "missions". Undershaft offers to donate his blood money to Barbara's impoverished shelter; when Barbara visits his super-clean arsenal (which designer John Gunter boldly represents as an altar to firepower), her resistance to financially-assisted salvation crumbles.

The difficulty for the director is that this is a conflict between two versions of piety. Though he may be branded "the Prince of Darkness" by those who meet him, Undershaft is even more sure of the sanctity of his world-view than Peter Mandelson; selling arms to everyone is his idea of an ethical foreign policy. Shaw's stage-directions for Barbara when handling those deaf to the lure of tambourine and drum, meanwhile, paint an archetypal do-gooder: "sunny and fearless" or "very businesslike".

In Peter Bowles and Jemma Redgrave, Hall has chosen two actors of the less is less school. Bowles uses the arched eyebrow as a means of expression like it was still in fashion. His Undershaft smiles beatifically at the pampered family he has reclaimed after years apart, hands perpetually planted in the pockets of his suit, calmly delivering the bons mots of the self-satisfied profiteer ("The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it"). While plausible as a man who literally doesn't need to lift a finger, Bowles is too suave to convince us that Undershaft's bitter ideology is the result of a deprived childhood as an East End orphan. Redgrave's Barbara is very much her father's daughter - cool, calm, quiet; hardly the living embodiment of the army's motto, "blood and fire". What it is about her that fills Greek student Adolphus Cusins (David Yelland) with such ardour is anyone's guess.

In a production where the cast seem to have been instructed to move only if they are in danger of developing thrombosis, Yelland's facial mobility - contorting with all manner of conflicting impulses - is a godsend. Cusins is both an intellectual buffoon and the only one with the acumen to realise what he is up against, playing at nonchalance to win the favour of both sides. He energises a first half which is otherwise rendered unnecessarily dull by a lacklustre recreation of Salvation Army life (even Michael Pennington seems adrift as the token member of the "deserving poor" that Shaw so wanted to empower).

It's only in the final act that the cast really starts to fire on all cylinders. After Undershaft has impassively dismissed the polite disregard of his sons Stephen (Crispin Bonham-Carter playing idle rich as though to the manner born) with the chilling words: "I am the government of your country", the general acceptance of his steely pragmatism feels like national betrayal. "The way of life lies through the factory of death," Barbara and Cusins conclude. The gunfire and blast of "It's a long way to Tipperary" with which Hall rounds off the action remind you that this tragic paradox is not just another Shawian conceit, it's the polluted air we breathe.