Arms and the Man

By: George Bernard Shaw

Narrated by: Noel Badrian, Rob Goll, Jeff Moon, Sarah Mitchell, Craig Franklin, Amanda Friday, Anna Grace

Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw: Presented by The Online Stage.

In Biography for Beginners, a collection of sarcastic quatrains about various celebrities, Edmund Clerihew Bentley wrote:

Mr Bernard Shaw
Was just setting out for the war,
When he heard it was a dangerous trade
And demonstrably underpaid.

This rather unkind stanza is illustrative of Shaw's convenient pacifism, which forms the major theme of this play. For Shaw, war was an anachronistic form of barbarism - in his view, people ought to be able to resolve their differences through intelligent and spirited discourse.

The action of the play, which occurs during a conflict on the Balkans, is initiated by the discovery by Raina, the daughter of an military officer, of a man who has taken refuge in her bedroom. Unfortunately, the man belongs to the opposing army. How will she deal with a notional enemy who behaves with such quixotic courtesy?

Cast

Narrator - Noel Badrian
Captain Bluntschli - Rob Goll
Major Petkoff - Peter Tucker
Officer/ Major Sergius Saranoff - Jeff Moon
Catherine Petkoff - Sarah Mitchell
Nicola - Craig Franklin
Raina Petkoff - Amanda Friday
Louka - Anna Grace

Audio edited by Denis Daly

Public Domain (P)2019 The Online Stage