Melissa King (seat K19 left rear orchestra, June 24th; seat A109 orchestra, August 12th):(6/24) It's a very good production and I enjoyed all of it, but my eyes and ears were glued on David Warner from start to finish. He was truly magnificent. His performance was so seamless and graceful and he has great comic timing and that beautiful voice ringing out through the theatre was just glorious. It just blows me away that this man hasn't done a play in 30 years. He looked so at ease on stage and I have to say he's very brave to do this having been away from the theatre so long.
It was a great experience all around and I urge everyone who is able to see Major Barbara to definitely go.
(8/12) My seat was second row, dead center and I couldn't have been in a better spot to watch the play unfold. It make such a difference to sit so close to the stage as opposed to 9 rows back where I was in June. Unfortunately I was so captivated by DW throughout the performance that I sort of tuned out the larger context of the play. So there were no great revelations the second time round. The play is still compelling, and the cast is, I think, even better than in June, but I still have a problem with Barbara's jolting turnaround in the last scene -- it's just not convincing.
DW was marvelous once again. His repartee with Dana Ivey sparkled more this time around. He really turned on the charm with her and it was clear to see that Mrs. Undershaft, despite her outward disapproval of her husband, still found him irresistible. He also got bigger laughs than he did in the previous performance and greater cheers during the curtain call.
I paid close attention to his costumes. He looked good in all of them, but my favorite remains the brown tweed suit and green overcoat he wears in the Salvation Army mission scene. He looked drop dead gorgeous in those colors, and his two-toned brown leather and suede shoes were very flattering too. The man has never looked sexier than he does now :-).
One highlight of the performance came in that same scene. He finishes writing the check to the mission and as he rose up from his stool, he knocked it over, I think accidentally. A minute or two later, he and Dolly shouted something in unison and DW grabbed the tipped over stool and hoisted it high over his head as if to further emphasize his exclamation. It was a wonderfully inventive use of a prop.
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Jennifer Kramer (seat F101 mezzanine, July 29th):
I'm not up on Shaw so I can't say for sure if there is A Shavian Way of staging things, but some aspects did irk me. The structure of the play leaves the title character as an animated rhetorical device. Barbara (Cherry Jones) literally announces her changes of heart after she pops on again after a scene change, or after someone stops "making speeches" (to coin a phrase), leaving me to think, "Huh? How did that happen when I wasn't looking?" That's nothing you can blame the director or actors for, but there may well be some things they can adjust. It is, after all, a 3-HOUR-long comedy. The pacing per se is quick enough that you can still make out what people say, so where's the fat to cut?
Well, as I say I don't know Shaw but I know funny. (Think of Joe Bologna as the fake Sid Caesar in My Favorite Year, telling the mob boss, "In *my* business, you don't cut funny.") I know David Warner knows funny. I wish I weren't who I am and in the forum I'm in because it can be blown off as gushing. Really, this is my considered professional opinion that this man knows comic timing involves more than pausing after a line as if to wait for a rim shot. You're up there doing things like traveling from one end of the stage to another, or entrancing or exiting, or sitting in a chair, or working with a prop. You can either do all that as if waiting for the next opportunity to say something funny or you can *be* funny doing all that. This man knows how to be funny (and true to his characterization at the same time) by merely adjusting himself in a chair while someone else is talking, without upstaging the other actor. That can only be done by someone who knows what he's doing and understands the difference between declamation and engagement (and is aided and abetted by a costumer who makes him look less like a Victorian relic and more 20th Century relic as the play progresses). I'm not going to say only Warner does that. Rick Holmes, who plays Cholly (Lomax) is - as a Betty-White-in-Golden-Girls type overaged ingenue - quite adept at milking his props, clothes and stage business with energy and economy. Watch him hold a newspaper like a kid who can't yet read!
Where's the fat? Well, Barbara's boyfriend is showcased far more than is justified by his character, I think. He gets lots of sequences where he's isolated on one side of the stage addressing the audience while supposedly conversing with someone else, which I find unconvincing on principle. There are half a dozen instances of him doing what I can only call a melting candle wax pose, when he is yet again overwhelmed by his infatuation with Barbara. Now it does get laughs from some people each time, but as someone who knows funny I can tell you that there's a difference between riffing and building on a bit. Serious comedy repeats only to improvise or amplify. If you can't think of a way to build on a bit you can cut most of it, leaving about five minutes you can allocate to other people (the Stephen character - played by Zak Orth - for instance, who seems unsympathetic from the opening and stays that way). Believe me, five minutes in stage time is an eternity.
Why do a good number of the performers not really take full advantage of their stage time? Perhaps it's still early in the run? Are they that uncomfortable in period dress? Hmmm...
There's a line in which Barbara complains about having to wear a regular dress when she'd gotten used to an army uniform. I have a sneaking suspicion this can be funny and work as a comment on changing standards for women of the time, and once again the costumes set the stage for it (since she and her sister and her mother all appear in that scene wearing frumpy dresses). But the line is done more as a genuine complaint, leading into a harangue against her dad for ruining her life. Barbara doesn't even seem a "center of the storm" straight person. She really seems to have been written as someone who can be chipper but who is essentially humorless. I'm baffled.
Then again, this may be part of Shaw's strategy - using humor as a rhetorical come-on. As someone who espouses Joyce's definition of what separates pornography from art (porn being what you want for yourself, and art what you feel impelled to share with the world), I can only be disturbed by the threads of possessiveness that wind through this supposed comedy. Approached in that way, Barbara's fiancé Adolphus (Denis O’Hare) is the instigator. He's the first to admit - unashamedly one may pointedly add - that he is led by his ambition to have Barbara to himself at all costs. Barbara is the last to be brought around to Adolphus' way of thinking, but that makes their "happy ending" together as a couple into a tragedy. The woman becomes domesticated and so is her original ambition of saving souls. Her holy war becomes perverted into an enthralling yet essentially innocuous suburban hobby, something more akin to gardening.
I have noticed three things about the role of Undershaft, all typical of how people use Warner. He is often a being from the near future in some fin de siecle context (watch him on an early-model motorcycle in Ragtime Summer or Ballad of Cable Hogue); here, too. He is playing an antagonist in the play, one of the ironies being his reliance on mental gamesmanship in his personal life when full-scale weaponry is his business. (Thuggery is left to minor male characters.) The last is the use and abuse of his charm. I wouldn't say it's alright that reviewers -- those who take Adolphus' or Lady Britomart's references to Undershaft as "the devil" or "evil" literally -- think he's being the proverbial bad guy. Yet Undershaft is clearly presented as someone who manipulates people with his suavity.
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Karen N. Lee (seat C141 mezzanine, July 29th):
The Roundabout Theatre's production of Shaw's Major Barbara has my recommendation. I suppose it would be difficult do Shaw very badly and this production is a good one.
My highest praise goes to David Warner as Andrew Undershaft. The other cast members, including Cherry Jones as Barbara, Denis O'Hare as Adolphus and Dana Ivey as Lady Britomart Undershaft are fine, but I didn't find their performances especially interesting or entertaining beyond the always wonderful words of the playwright.
Perhaps I feel that way because the production of Major Barbara with which I'm most familiar is the 1941 film with Wendy Hiller and Rex Harrison, both of whom were notably charming in addition to being brilliant actors. Of course, with film there are the advantages of close-ups and cinematic editing which can bring performances to audiences more intimately than it is often possible to do for audience members in a theater watching a live performance from poor seats. And I was in seated high in the mezzanine clouds of the American Airlines Theatre.
On the other hand, David Warner was brilliant - a great presence as befits the role of a successful man whose magnetic personality and intelligence, used for good or evil, are pulling everyone with whom he comes into contact into his orbit.
At the age of 60, Warner, who was the gangly young star of the 1966 cult film Morgan!, has become an elegant, silver-haired actor of great personality; combining dignity with a marvelous comedic sense. He imbues Andrew Undershaft with all of the charm, wit, intelligence, cunning and a bit of frailty that Shaw must have had in mind when he created the character.
There is a section in another Shaw play, Man and Superman, in which Don Juan dies and goes to Hell. There he meets all the people he knew in life who have also died. Possibly the best thing about going to Hell is that once you get there you don't age, but remain at the age you are when you arrived there. So Don Juan's father is younger than he. All the young women Don Juan seduced are older than he, etc. Anyway, this digression is to say that I would like to see a production of Major Barbara with Wendy Hiller and Rex Harrison when they were young and David Warner at the age he is now. All right, I know it's silly, but I'll bet Shaw would like that too.
Several cast members in supporting roles, especially Jenny Sterlin (Rummy), James Gale (Snobby) and Kelly Hutchinson (Jenny) gave very enjoyable performances.
Notable as well are the interesting and well-conceived sets and set decoration.
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Susan Ciriello (seat AA3 left orchestra box, August 16th):
Since I was already familiar with the 1941 film version of Major Barbara, I couldn't help comparing the current Broadway production to the film. And I'm happy to report that David Warner's performance as the unabashedly devilish arms-manufacturer father of the title character compares *very* favorably! Ironically, where Robert Morley's portrayal of the character in the film is exaggerated and stagey, Warner's interpretation for the stage is understated and natural. He has an unassuming yet commanding presence that, rather than forcibly demanding your attention, hypnotizes you with his irresistible charm. His sense of comedic timing, facial expressions, and body language convey just the right amount of subtle irony to get the point of this thought-provoking social satire across and elicit many good laughs in the process.
I also found Rex Harrison's performance as Undershaft's future son-in-law, Adolphus Cusins (nicknamed "Dolly") to be distractingly over the top in the film. However, seeing Denis O'Hare's version on the stage made me realize why Harrison's characterization didn't quite work. As the nerdy professor of Greek, O'Hare, with his slight build, wire-rimmed glasses, and soft-spoken manner, was perfect. The suave, sophisticated Rex Harrison was simply miscast.
I found the first half of the film highly engaging and entertaining, with its array of amusing and offbeat (yet not-so-unfamiliar) inhabitants of and visitors to the Salvation Army shelter where Major Barbara serves, but its second half slow, cerebral and difficult. Onstage Warner and O'Hare bring Act II to life by contrast, and the interaction between them is one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking parts of the play.
Other aspects of the play, however, did not compare as favorably to the film. I might have found David Lansbury's portrayal of angry street fighter Bill Walker fairly good. However, in comparison with Robert Newton's screen interpretation of the character, it becomes clear just how subtle and skillful an actor Newton (who, interestingly enough, was often accused of overacting) could be. Where Lansbury is all loud, angry bluster, Newton's rage alternately erupts, seethes, and falters. There is an innocence and, at times, even a gentleness to his anger; Newton deftly conveys ineffectual rage without the need to raise his voice. It is obvious why his performance was considered by many to be the highlight of the film. He is ultimately as threatening as the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz. During Walker's scenes with Undershaft in the play, I couldn't help imagining what pure bliss it would be to see David Warner and Robert Newton on the same stage together!
Most likely in the interest of not bogging down the action, one of Walker's most hilarious scenes has been cut from this production. In it, he confronts the wrestler who stole his girlfriend in hope of getting his jaw broken but finds his spirit broken instead. Without an actor of Newton's charisma in the role, I can't argue with the decision to leave it out.
On the other hand, without the scenes that amount to nearly the first fifteen minutes of the film, the theatre audience never gets a proper introduction to Barbara (the zealous Christian missionary) or to Dolly (the eclectic intellectual) and wonders what brought this mismatched pair together. Without such vital exposition, one wonders, in fact, how the play even got its title, since Andrew Undershaft emerges as the main character, reducing Barbara to a mere straightwoman. Although it is easy to understand why the director would choose to showcase the veteran Warner's talents!
Cherry Jones's Barbara is one-dimensional, the picture of grinning, almost excessive idealism and (lost) innocence. But a viewing of the film shows what the character could be. As Major Barbara, Wendy Hiller's performance is a bit over the top, but she also conveys a great deal of subtlety and depth. One actually gets the sense that Barbara has thought about and sincerely believes in her cause, not that she has simply fallen into it blindly and naively. We believe it along with her. With her frozen smile, one almost gets the sense that Cherry Jones is making a mockery of Barbara's supposed beliefs. The viewer of the film version empathizes with Barbara's pain and sadness as she witnesses the selling out of the organization in which she had put all her faith. Her parting with Bill Walker at the end of Act I is, for me, the most poignant moment in the film. When the curtain fell on Act I of the play, however, I felt only relief that it was time to get up and stretch. (Little did I know at that point that Act II would prove to be so much better than Act I, once the character of Undershaft moves to center stage.)
Most of the other cast members, especially Dana Ivey as Lady Britomart Undershaft, Kelly Hutchinson as Jenny Hill, James Gale as Snobby Price, and Rick Holmes as Charles Lomax, were excellent, and the sets are attractive and impressive. The theme is particularly timely and intriguing in light of political topics under current debate in the U.S.
I highly recommend you see this play--then see the movie if you haven't before. And, finally, sit back and enjoy the sublime synthesis of the two in your imagination!
After reading this review you can probably guess why Susan runs the official Robert Newton Web Site!
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