South Coast Rep Finds Full Force of ‘Arms’

“On my honor, it was a serious play,” protested its author George Bernard Shaw when “Arms and the Man” first opened in 1894 and audiences laughed throughout. Shaw was being only partially facetious; his 1894 play represents one of the funniest victories ever of good hard thinking over luxurious idealism, whether applied to love or to war. At South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Martin Benson has directed a delightful, beautifully cast production of “Arms” that does full justice to Shaw’s early play--a romantic comedy with serious ideas about the way the world should work.

Late one night, a desperate, gun-wielding soldier climbs into the bedroom window of a young lady from the very best family in Bulgaria. He is escaping the fighting that has spilled from the battlefield to the city street below her balcony. That is how Raina Petkoff (Nike Doukas) meets Capt. Bluntschli (Harry Groener), a Swiss mercenary, fighting on the Serb side in the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885. (Mercifully, no reference to the current Bosnian situation is inserted.)

Even though Bluntschli is fighting a regiment led by Raina’s own fiance--a self-important poseur of whom Bluntschli has nothing nice to say--the “gracious young lady” agrees to help the exhausted, starving Swiss, who is so grateful for the chocolates she feeds him that he almost cries.

Thus begins one of Shaw’s most winning love stories. Laughing at Raina’s image of her fiance’s--or anyone’s--heroics on the battlefield, Bluntschli refuses to confirm the young lady’s grand ideas of soldiering, or life, or love, or anything. But he touches that part of her constructed personality that longs for authenticity and truth. The author, of course, makes Bluntschli’s anti-romantic approach to life a very engaging quality, as it is a stand-in for his own.

Since Bluntschli is always right, it is imperative that he be likable, and Groener is an ideal Bluntschli. He combines the self-effacing comic timing of John Cleese with the physical grace of the young Dick Van Dyke. Primarily a song-and-dance man, Groener uses his body brilliantly in the scene in Raina’s bedroom, when she orders him to stand up while he is falling asleep on his feet. His brain wants to obey her but his lanky limbs have a will of their own, and they head him for the bed, where he performs an intoxicating little ballet--a war between duty and the senses.

Bluntschli’s plain speaking is in opposition to the grandiose way Raina and her fiance, Sergius (Daniel Reichert), talk to each other about the “higher love” they share. Finding the “higher love” exhausting, Sergius turns his affections to Raina’s fetching maid Louka (Alicia Wollerton), a woman with self-serving ideas about social equality. Sergius is no common heel; he is agonized by his own hypocrisy. Reichert manages to deliver an unabashedly comic Sergius--a preening man with a fatuous mustache who sucks in his lips when crossed--that nevertheless gets across a sense of a human being trying to make sense of contradictory impulses.

As the most spoiled rich girl in all of Bulgaria, Doukas looks ravishing (a bit like Disney’s Princess Jasmine, with the help of Walter Hicklin’s whimsical costumes). She is appealing but could tone down the cuteness in Raina’s headstrong aspect. As her mother, Sally Kemp is very funny whenever she lies to her husband, which is often, and Richard Doyle is excellent as the oblivious Major Petkoff, grimacing to keep up with everyone, which he can never quite manage to do. Jefrey Alan Chandler adds a layer of quiet subversiveness as the servant Nicola. Shaw obviously enjoyed skewering the social pretensions of the Petkoffs, a family inordinately proud that they have a library (Michael C. Smith’s solid set shows it to have about 12 books).

But first and foremost, “Arms and the Man” is a love story, even though Shaw viewed romance as nothing but extended immaturity, and he changed the play’s subtitle from “A Romantic Comedy” to “An Anti-Romantic Comedy.” “You are the first man I ever met who did not take me seriously,” says the delighted Raina to Bluntschli, and he answers, “You mean, don’t you, that I am the first man that has ever taken you quite seriously?” Director Martin Benson has taken Shaw’s characters quite seriously, and he will consequently have you rooting for Raina and Bluntschli to find not the higher love, but the real thing, never mind what George Bernard Shaw would say about it.

* “Arms and the Man,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends June 30. $17-$38. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

“Arms and the Man,”

Nike Doukas: Raina Petkoff

Sally Kemp: Catherine Petkoff

Alicia Wollerton: Louka

Harry Groener: Capt. Bluntschli

David Nevell: Russian Officer

Jefrey Alan Chandler: Nicola

Richard Doyle: Major Petkoff

Daniel Reichert: Major Sergius Saranoff

A South Coast Repertory production. By George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Martin Benson. Sets Michael C. Smith. Costumes Walker Hicklin. Lighting Paulie Jenkins. Original music and sound Michael Roth. Production manager Michael Mora. Stage manager Scott Harrison.