“MAJOR BARBARA”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 643, 20 April 1929, Page 24

“MAJOR BARBARA”

Revival in London SHAW’S PLAY RECEIVED WITH ENTHUSIASM Bernard Shaw, in his preface to “Major Barbara” (dated 1906) hopes that his play is “both true and inspired.” After seeing Leon M. Lion’s revival, at Wyndham’s, I am inclined to think that it is a fair claim (writes Alan Parsons in a London daily). The end of Act 11., where Major Barbara resigns her commission in the Salvation Army, is deeply moving. The gibes of Bill Walker, the ruffian whose soul she thought she had almost saved when the army cheerfully accepts the money cynically offered by her rascally father, the cannon founder—blood money in its most literal sense—are unbearably painful. The end of the play, when she returns to the colours, fired by the hope of saving the souls of the “quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures” in her father’s model factory, is a magnificent piece of writing. “Major Barbara” is, in fact, a very fine play, and it is astonishing how up-to-date it all is. It did not need the characteristically vigorous programme note by the author to excuse the revival of his play. Too Wordy Only sometimes it seems a little overweighted with words. Were he now rewriting the play, I feel he would rigorously compress certain passages. Audiences are more in a hurry now than they were 24 years ago, and more easily grow impatient. Mr. Shaw has been fortunate in his interpreters. Sybil Thorndike has never done anything finer than her Barbara lovable, romantic, Impulsive, the almost hysterical high spirits of the Salvation Army lass, with her big drum and blood-and-fire flag, closely allied to the deepest melancholy. Baiiol Holloway, as her munitionking father. Undershaft, is a perfect foil to her- —the prince of darkness, the man of blood, whose creed it is that poverty is the one and only unforgiveable crime. With how lively a pen are the other characters drawn —Cusins, the professor of Greek, who bangs the big drum for love of Barbara (admirably played by Lewis Casson); Lomax, who cheerfully lights a cigarette in Undershaft’s guncotton shed: Stephen, the priggish brother of Barbara: and Lady Britomart, their practical and worldly mother. Clare Greet Again And there is Clare Greet to take up her old part of Rummy, that kindly old hypocrite pretending with Snobby Price (Harold Scott) to be a miserable sinner in order to be revered by the Salvation Army. Gordon Harker’s Bill Walker is a perfect little character sketch.