‘Barbara’s’ Transformation Incomplete

“Major Barbara” is a lot like Moby Dick--theater companies keep hurling themselves at George Bernard Shaw’s unwieldy leviathan, obsessed with transforming its heady dialectic into gripping drama. The nearly impenetrable talkiness of the piece dooms most productions to abject tedium.

Michael Winters’ staging for A Noise Within fares more honorably than that, deftly harpooning Shaw’s scathing social satire and bringing a measure of vitality to the abstraction. Ultimately, however, the production can’t transcend the boundaries of cerebral argument.

From a strictly classical perspective, of course, it doesn’t have to. Shaw was quite content to use the theater as a medium for debate, and “Major Barbara’s” unromanticized scrutiny of the moral complexities inherent in the early 1900s’ newly expanding armaments industry sounded an important wake-up call to audiences stupefied by Victorian idealism.

But modern viewers steeped in the realities of arms manufacturing and the threat of global annihilation aren’t likely to be shaken by argument alone, no matter how eloquently mounted. Shaw’s characters need to be more than mouthpieces for ideas.

Gail Shapiro’s moving performance in the title role elevates Salvation Army crusader Barbara Undershaft to well-rounded human stature. Passionate and committed to the supreme value of the human soul, she locks horns with her long-lost father, Andrew (Mitchell Edmonds), an unrepentant arms industrialist. With their respective value systems on the line, they agree to exchange visits to each other’s milieus.

The more affecting scenes take place on Barbara’s turf, thanks to James Karr and Eric David Johnson as social outcasts.

But in the opposing court, Edmonds coasts too much on Andrew’s wry, subversive homages to the god of capitalism without taking the trouble to make him an irresistible charmer--we have to like him in spite of ourselves. Barbara seems to emerge with the moral upper hand as a result, though better-matched antagonists would make for a more ambiguous, unsettling and effective ending.

* “Major Barbara,” A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Saturday, Wednesday, Thursday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Also Nov. 19, Dec. 3, Dec. 17, 7 p.m.; Nov. 25, 29, Dec. 8 , 9, 14 , 15, 8 p.m.; Nov. 26, Dec. 3, 9 , 16, 2 p.m. Ends Dec. 17. $10-$22. (818) 546-1924. Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes.