Major Barbara

It's the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Salvation Army this year and General William Booth would be well pleased with the quality of Harvard's dramatic tributes. First Steve Kaplan's Guys and Dolls, and now Michael Erhardt's Major Barbara, have done well by the order of the tambourine.

But the Army of Shaw's play is more than the musical comedy of Guys and Dolls. Major Barbara is a vehicle for a social philosophy: "the Gospel of St. Andrew Undershaft." Undershaft is Barbara's munitions-manufacturer father, who preaches a religion of "money and gunpowder." He insists that the worst crime of all is poverty. They who disdain wealth and prate morality are hypocrites. "Money is the most important thing in the world," says Shaw in his Preface, "It is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially." It is better to be a wicked rich man than a poor honest one. The former has power that can be turned to good; the latter has only snivelling weakness.

The turning point of Major Barbara comes when the Major realizes the bond between her father's doctrine and the Salvation Army's: both first feed the face and then talk right and wrong.

Shaw is Shaw, however, and he never lets the moralizing get you down. Major Barbara is a funny show and the Loeb production loses none of that humor. There's the menagerie of Lady Britomart, Undershaft's estranged wife. Her son Stephen (Charles Degelman) cavills, while her son-in-law-to-be (William Docken) snivels, while Roger Zim as a ghoulish, confused butler looks on.

The second act is peopled by refugees from The Threepenny Opera, both as characters and actors. Peter Johnson and Susan Channing sneer at each other across two inches of mutual nose. Leland Moss stalks and glowers while Vernon Blackman, as the smallest and most industrious of the Cockney quartet, loots the tambourine. Erhardt's direction keeps things moving although the first two acts seem hampered by the shallow sets, forcing all movement into one plane.

Emily Levine as Lady Britomart, and Hamilton Corbett as Barbara's professor-fiancee, are the best of the leads. Miss Levine's portrayal of the imperious lady who has her son transfer a cushion from chair to chair as she moves is clear and consistent. Corbett's Adolphus Cusins believably combines modesty, erudition, cynicism, and animal joy.

Erhardt himself plays Andrew Undershaft, and does so forcefully. However, I would question his interpretation. Undershaft should be an obnoxious man. When the audience is forced to admit that what he says is true, it should be regretfully, as Shaw puts it, "with a pain in the self-esteem." We should begrudge the nobility of Undershaft's thought. As Erhardt played the role, his manners were already too noble, his voice too Stentorian.

The audience was convinced Undershaft was right before Barbara was and this made the role of Barbara, played by Patricia Hawkins, much more difficult. She seemed both far more naive and far more pigheaded than Shaw intended. Barbara has to separate the truthful doctrine from the repulsive personality of Undershaft. Erhardt was too engaging, too soon.

But both Erhardt and Miss Hawkins play their roles in a way consistent with Erhardt's interpretation. And like the rest of the cast, they managed to ground Shavian moralizing and epigrams on a firm base of Shavian entertainment.