Por Charlene Baldridge

George Bernard Shaw’s 1894 comedy, “Arms and the Man,” was meant – like all his plays – to lampoon society, the times and mores (customs and conventions) as in practices, and to point out that in many ways women are superior creatures, and men, with their warlike tendencies, mostly fools.

Aided by a fine company and lavish design work, director Jessica Stone upholds Shaw’s intent in her production at The Old Globe, which continues through June 14.

At the forum following the performance of May 19, the actors evinced insight and intelligence, a unified appreciation of Shaw, and a zest for what they are doing – playing a glorious work of language and wit and enjoying it to the hilt. We learned, among many other things, why Zach Appleman, who plays Shaw’s honest character, Captain Bluntschli, speaks a different English than the others. It was a conscious directorial decision designed to set the character, a Swiss, apart from the others. He knows and understands their language, here an uninflected American English, but is the foreigner among them.

You may remember Bluntschli, the chocolate loving mercenary who is pursued by enemy soldiers and climbs a drainpipe into the boudoir of the high born Raina Petkoff (Wrenn Schmidt), who is engaged to the “heroic” Major Sergius Saranoff (Enver Gjokaj), who led his cavalry into a line of machine-gun wielding opposing troops. Sergius overran the enemy only because their ammunition would not work in their guns. Thus, he became an instant hero.

Raina saves Bluntschli by hiding him, falls a bit in love with him, and off he goes in the morning, disguised in her father’s coat. Conrad John Schuck portrays her blustering father, Major Paul Petkoff. In his coat pocket Raina has placed her portrait. After the brief war is over, Bluntschli returns to the Petkoff estate, ostensibly to return the coat, but hoping to see Raina again.

Other characters are Catherine Petkoff (Marsha Mason), the Major’s wife; her servants Louka (Sofiya Akilova) and Nicola (Greg Hildreth); a Russian soldier (Jake Millgard), and a brilliantly invented Village Musician (violinist Ernest Sauceda), a gypsy type who adds merriment with his inventions.

As Mason pointed out, Shaw is not performed frequently these days because his plays require large companies and intricately designed scenic and costume elements, here beautifully made manifest by scenic designer Ralph Funicello, costume designer David Israel Reynoso, lighting designer Austin R. Smith, and Mark Bennett, who composed the original music and is sound designer.

There were numerous, apparently entranced young people in the audience on May 19. Exposure to this finely done and brilliantly constructed play is definitely a gift to them; in fact, Shaw seems to be the gift that keeps on giving regardless of time’s passing. We still suppress women and the lower classes, assume poses, and fight wars, Shaw the socialist and pacifist seems to say. How about that?

—Charlene Baldridge has been writing about the arts since 1979. You can follow her blog at charlenebaldridge.com or reach her at [email protected].