This first of Bernard Shaw's "plays pleasant", under Alan Stanford's lively direction, is as good, as thoughtful and as entertaining as any audience has a right to expect for a high summer season. In the author's stylish confrontation between the idiocies of heroism and high phoney romanticism, and the more sensible realities of war and love, the director has chosen to frame the former in highly mannered acting and the latter in more mundane shrug-and-shuffle performances. If the mannerisms of the heroic and romantically deluded are occasionally a bit more over-the-top than they need to be, and the purveyors of reality sometimes more prosaic than the words demand, the device nonetheless signals the author's intentions most effectively and theatrically. Shaw is having fun, and Stanford ensures that his audience is too.
Raina is told by her mother, Mrs Petkoff, that her beloved and betrothed Sergius has just achieved a major military victory, leading a charge which any professional soldier would have deemed suicidal but which through good luck ended with the rout of the Serbian army. Trouble is, as daftly romantic Raina is falling asleep, one of those routed - a Capt Bluntschli - comes climbing up to the balcony of her bedroom seeking sanctuary which, for no coherent reason, she grants him, concealing him from the Russian officer who comes to find him. Some months later, the war over, old Major Petkoff arrives home with disillusioned but still idiotic Sergius in tow. Mrs Petkoff and daughter Raina disintegrate into a mixture of attitudinising and panic. And then Bluntschli turns up to return the old coat he had been lent by Mrs Petkoff in which to make his escape.
It is all good, fast fun, with more than a few pokes at military and romantic pretensions. Liz Lloyd is Mrs Petkoff, staunchly trapped in her own delusions of grandiosity. Raina is Fiona O'Shaughnessy, deeply and dangerously committed to her own pretensions, and looking and sounding like a budding young Joan Greenwood, all a-flutter and very funny. David Herlihy is the plain-speaking, clear-headed Bluntschli, maybe the first person in Raina's life to take her seriously, and Des Keogh is the wonderfully bumbling old Major Petkoff who, with superb timing and intonation, probably manages to win more laughs per line than all the rest. Mark O'Halloran, perfectly posturing as Sergius, runs him a close second. Eileen McCloskey and Philip Judge are the conniving self-serving servants, and good at it.
The designs by Jacqueline Kobler (costumes), Robin Don (settings) and Rupert Murray (lighting) and perfectly theatrical and, with those excellent performances, it all adds up to a rollicking night of enjoyable theatre.
Running until July 30th. Booking: 01-8744045
