fajrdrako | Arms and the Man...

I just got back home from seeing the National Arts Centre production of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw.

It's a lavish, visually beautiful production of a play I've never seen before, though I used to be a huge fan of Shaw's work. I discovered it at twelve, when I saw "My Fair Lady" for the first time - and yes, I know the musical is the work of Lerner and Loewe, but the heart and soul of it is still pure George Bernard Shaw.

Over the years I read many Shaw plays, and saw some too, the best being "Caesar and Cleopatra" (which I saw at the NAC with Edward Atienza as Caesar), and "Candida". Oddly, the last one I read - the only one I've read in the last decade - was "Arms and the Man".

This production, directed by Marti Maradon, isn't just visually lavish. It's stylized, mannered, histrionic, overacted... Bombastic. And though Shaw's point is that some of his characters are overblown, making them actually so spoiled the point. Raina was bratty when she should have been cute, Luca was shrewish where she should have been bold, and Sergius was mostly just goofy - an obvious poseur. Bluntschli (played by David Marr) came off best, mostly because it's impossible to make him too overblown with the down to earth dialogue Shaw gave him. His speech about how he is a hopeless romantic was brilliant in many way.

Shaw wrote a charming play, but the director didn't take it seriously. That's one of the themes of the play. Characters keep complaining that other characters don't take them seriously. Yes, it's a comedy, but it's a comedy with a point to make and a theme to explore, and a lot of that got lost in the bombast.

The set was wonderful - very Balkan, very old-world-ornate. I loved it that the library the Petkoff family was so proud of, a room devoted entirely to books and therefore the best of civilization, had many shelves but only about half a dozen books in it.

I was puzzling over my attitude to Shaw's sexism, or non-sexism, as the case may be. I have never been sure what I think of his portrayal of women, or his attitude to them. When I was young, I liked it: I thought his women were interesting. In my late twenties I decided I didn't like it, that he was patronizing and demeaning to women. Recently I read a review or comment to the effect that Shaw's works were sexist and it brought me up short. Are they? I tried to work it out. Did the commentator just mean that, compared to the attitudes of 2003, Shaw's portrayal of the attitudes of 1903 was sexist? Or did he mean that Shaw was more sexist than other men of his time - compared to, say, Wilde or Barrie?

I can't see it. But I'm not sure what I do see. I'm still thinking about it.

It did cross my mind in passing that it would be fun to slash Sergius and Bluntschli, and not difficult at all. Especially if you took them seriously as characters, which I think is necessary for a good production - which tonight's show really wasn't.

No, don't worry, I am not going to write Shaw slash. Really.