Arms and the Man

Stuff that happens during the play

• Catherine Petkoff tells her daughter, Raina, that Sergius (Raina’s fiancé) has led the Bulgarian calvalry to a major victory over the Serbians; their maid, Louka, warns them to close the windows and lock the shutters while the calvary pursues enemy stragglers.
• After Raina ignores the orders to lock her window, a bedraggled Serbian artillery soldier climbs into the room. When Bulgarian soldiers arrive and demand to search the room, Raina hides the Serbian soldier.
• Raina and the soldier talk about the realities of war, Raina’s fiancé, and chocolates. Raina goes to find her mother to enlist her help in hiding the “chocolate cream soldier.” When they return, he is in bed fast asleep.
• Four months later, in the garden of Major Petkoff, the manservant Nicola lectures Louka (his fiancé) on the importance of proper respect for the upper class. Louka insists she is going to marry someone who doesn’t have the “soul of a servant.”
• Major Petkoff and Sergius return from war and recount the now- famous story of how a Swiss soldier escaped by climbing into the bedroom of a noble Bulgarian woman. Raina and Sergius declare that they have found a “higher love.”
• Raina leaves to get her hat, and Sergius immediately starts flirting with Louka by complaining how tiring it is to be involved with a “higher love.” Louka declares that Raina was involved in an affair while Sergius was at war. Sergius attempts to get Louka to reveal the lover, bruising her arm in the process.
• Raina and Catherine are shocked that Sergius and Major Petkoff know the story about the Serbian soldier, when the “chocolate cream soldier” himself arrives at their door.
• Coat-swapping, compliments, dueling, and romance ensues. 

Notes from the Director

HUMOROUSLY SERIOUS

On one level, Arms and the Man is a delightful romantic comedy. (G.B. Shaw would probably punch me in the face for saying that.) But it also simultaneously pokes fun at society (making it a lovely companion piece with The Importance of Being Earnest, which opened a year after Arms) while it dissects and discusses the morality of war in comic and complicated ways (making it perfect to be in repertory with Julius Caesar and The Life of King Henry the Fifth).

If you’ve never seen a play written by Shaw, Arms is a delicious starting point. If you’re already familiar with Shaw, then you probably know what a treat you’re in for at today’s show. The ASC has only done Shaw once – Saint Joan on the 2002 Bright Heaven of Invention Tour (also in rep with H5). I think Shaw suits the ASC aesthetic beautifully.

As the Artistic Director of an internationally-renowned SHAKESPEARE company whose home is the world’s only re-creation of SHAKESPEARE’s indoor theatre, I always have to seek a delicate balance when making final decisions about which NON-Shakespeare titles we will produce. We don’t do mechanical revolves, recorded sound effects, or special spooky lights. Rather than using modern technology to build a world of illusion (the way a film would do), we’re committed to using Shakespeare’s staging conditions, the Blackfriars Playhouse, and great language to create theatre of the imagination. We’re looking for language-based plays that work when we leave the lights on the audience and speak directly to you, making you part of the world of the play. Not every play works in these staging conditions. But Shaw’s do.

Shaw liked to write about his plays. A lot. He often pits his own flavor of “natural morality” against the “romantic morality” he disliked. Arms was supposed to be a “pleasant play” that was “humorously serious” and did not address social problems, but rather took a traditional drama plot and set up “a conflict between real life and the romantic imagination” found in popular theatre of the time. Shaw believed that modern society had achieved a state where the conventional ideas of good and evil were no longer relevant – the stuff that creates the most good and happiness should be considered “moral.” He championed that this natural morality could not be codified into a system of rules: each person should decide for him/herself what was right or wrong in each situation. Whatever enhances our existence is good; whatever makes life more difficult is bad. It sounds like a Facebook meme, but Shaw’s morality boils down to: a lie is good if it saves a life; a lie is bad if it hurts someone.

Part of what makes Arms so tasty in repertory with JC and H5 is how this morality is applied to war. Like Shakespeare’s two plays in this rep, Arms wrestles with true and false ideas of courage, honesty, glory, patriotism, and love. War is not necessarily heroic. And in spite of how heavy all this talk of morality is, Arms is flat-out charming and funny. Come take this humorously serious ride with us.

JIM WARREN

Artistic Director and Co-founder