Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
We attended the penultimate performance of this late nineteenth century play at the City of London’s small Bridewell theatre. It has inevitably dated but at times it is quite funny and of course some of its central issues are still with us and dealt with in that refreshingly modern way that distinguished the Fabians. So here we had an ironic lampooning of the servant-master, young-old, man-woman relationships, all tellingly portrayed by Kareem Nasif as the servant Nicola. He’s a sort of modernised Polonius – and I think there may even have been a quote from Hamlet in there.
It’s a send-up of the pretentious nineteenth romanticism of the landed gentry in the face of rigorous (and republican) business acumen. These are portrayed through Bulgarian and Swiss characters respectively. At one point the Bulgarian Major Paul Petkoff, on hearing of the Swiss mercenary’s incredible inherited wealth splutters out “Are you the Swiss Emperor?” But for me it was the frisson of the parallelism of class and sexual politics that really hit home. Its message, that women need not follow the rules of the patriarchy, came through strong and clear and seems as relevant as ever.
There were some oddities in the construction of the play as performed here that stuck out. For example, in this production, we only hear near the end that some of the characters believe Nicola and the other servant, Louka, are engaged and so the supposed bombshell that they are not falls a bit flat.
Incidentally there are two pubs round the corner from the theatre. The much smaller and quieter Twelve Bells has all the dingy charm and slight ineptitude of a traditional pub – a medium sized party of French diners had to be moved twice before they could find a niche to accommodate them all. But it beats the other nearby hostelry with its constantly blaring sports commentaries handsdown.
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