Peter Hall has an extraordinary gift for reviving old classics just in time for them to coinicide with events in the body politic. He did it with Wilde's An Ideal Husband and now he seems to have struck again with Shaw's Major Barbara - with all its talk of arms sales and moral debates on mammon versus ethics.
Not that Hall's otherwise tremendous production is entirely able to disguise some of Shaw's more lumbering tricks - exploitation of the workers filtered through a dreadful kind of cloth-cap, My Fair Lady cliche - though even these have a validity. Scrap-heap redundancy and downsizing are not exclusive to our own day. In Major Barbara, however, Shaw has still given us one of the best, if mischievously slanted, discussions on the profit-making motive overlaid by a cynicism that wickedly questions its alternative - altruistic philanthropy.
One can never be quite sure whether Shaw sees Major Barbara's zealous good-works as so much posturing - and in Jemma Redgrave's quiescent, not yet quite convincing account of his Sally Army saviour, the signals are certainly ambiguous.
No such doubts, however, about the play's main antagonists - Peter Bowles's maverick rags-to-riches millionaire arms manufacturer, Andrew Undershaft and David Yelland's bespectacled Greek professor and Major Barbara anomorata, Adolphus Cusins.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article