THEATER REVIEW : La Jolla Says Hello to Shaw With Feisty and Witty ‘Arms’

There is a cautionary note in the program for “Arms and the Man” at the La Jolla Playhouse, warning of the dangers of making too much of the parallels between the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885, near the end of which Shaw’s play is set, and the current carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It is a note director Lisa Peterson partly ignores. How can there not be the temptation, given current events, to make the connection? Peterson does, though strictly as an aside to the production.

In her revival of “Arms” that opened Sunday in the Mandell Weiss Forum, indeterminate peasants mill about the streets to the Arabic strains of Michael Roth’s music, exchanging gunfire, delivering goods or receiving air drops as a way of bridging scenes without becoming an integral part of them.

It is all they can do, and more than enough, since Shaw’s play is intent on something else: showing us, in a boisterous comedy (as close to farce as Shaw gets), the absurdity of jingoism in the face of war.

Peterson and dramaturge Elissa Adams have also minimally fooled around with Shaw’s script and the results--surprise, surprise--are admirable. They boil down chiefly to judicious snipping, with minor intercessions in the name of modernity, slight shifts in rhythm and emphasis that invigorate the text.

Invigorate? Shaw ? Not as impossible as it seems with the splendid help of an exuberant cast that includes the following: Mark Harelik as that Swiss Chocolate Cream Soldier, Captain Bluntschli, who also thinks and moves with the precision of a Swiss clock; Cynthia Nixon as a loopy Raina, a pretty version of Olive Oyl; the vibrant Mario Arrambide as her virile and stentorian father, Petkoff, and the apoplectic Andrew Weems who seems the sheer embodiment of Sergius, the hopelessly inflated toy major, to whom Raina is betrothed.

Raina’s hand may be given to Sergius, but her heart is soon lost to the Swiss, which complicates everything deliciously and allows Shaw to make his remarks about the vicissitudes of war via those of romantic entanglements. (There is war and then there is war.)

Of course, the plot thickens to involve a lost coat, misplaced billets doux , the amorous availability of the maid, Louka (Sevanne Kassarjian), and the class consciousness of her betrothed, the manservant, Nicola (Jan Triska).

All top grist for the Shavian mill, which regularly converts original thinking and lively dissertation into witty dialogue serving specific ends, not the least of which is entertaining the fickle public.

However, Peterson, who abundantly demonstrated her own considerable skill with her staging of Elizabeth Egloff’s “The Swan” last season, has gone a step further.

She has enhanced a relatively minor comedy in the Shavian canon with her own independently creative thinking, staging this “Arms and the Man” with a verve and imagination that sharpen content instead of, as so often happens, overwhelming it. With the help of set designer Robert Brill, she has turned Sergius’ first entrance--an innocent directive of him knocking at the stable gates--into a vision of Sergius strutting his stuff outside the gates on the back of a mechanical horse. The mechanical part of it makes it a perfect hoot.

Shaw’s tangential focus on the advent of electricity (Ivonne Coll as sensible Mrs. Petkoff virtually coos over the new electric bell) is transformed into a central conceit that becomes another visual gag. Servants stand and hold up work lights the way ancient Egyptian slaves stood waving fans, to enable the members of this household to go about their business. A bit much perhaps, but then, isn’t the play?

The conceits marry well, as do this playwright and director whose individual senses of theatrical occasion are well-matched and, one year short of its centennial, make this the liveliest “Arms and the Man” in recent memory.

This is also an auspicious debut for Shaw at the Playhouse, which, incredibly, has never attempted his work before. Shaw’s instinctual brashness and irreverence are naturals for this theater, as this productions shows. If Shaw had wanted a feistier, more enjoyable or more telling revival of this play, he would have been hard put to find it.

* “Arms and the Man,” La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Forum, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 15. $25-$30; (619) 550-1010, TDD/Voice (619) 550-1030. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Cynthia Nixon: Raina

Ivonne Coll: Catherine Petkoff

Sevanne Kassarjian: Louka

Mark Harelik: Captain Bluntschli

Chris Flanders: Russian Officer

Jan Triska: Nicola

Mario Arrambide: Major Paul Petkoff

Andrew Weems: Major Sergius Saranoff

A revival of the 1894 play by George Bernard Shaw. Director Lisa Peterson. Sets Robert Brill. Lights Chris Kortum. Costumes Christina Haatainen. Music and Sound Michael Roth. Dramaturge Elissa Adams. Stage manager Wendy Beaton. Assistant stage managers Cheryl Riggins, Peggy Sasso, Susan A. Virgilio.