A Noise Within takes up ‘Arms’

George Bernard Shaw made a career out of taking people to task for their hypocrisies, but he knew how to put on a show. After all, can you name another Nobel Prize winner for literature who also copped an Oscar for best screenplay? (For the 1938 film adaptation of “Pygmalion.”) And there’s no better case to be made for Shaw’s irresistible entertainment value than A Noise Within’s effervescent new production of “Arms and the Man.”

Shaw subtitled this 1894 work “an anti-romantic comedy” but delivers one of the best meet-cutes in stage history. It’s Bulgaria, 1885, and nouveau riche princess Raina Petkoff (Dorothea Harahan) is dizzy with the news of her fiance Sergius’ gallant cavalry charge against the Serbs. But as the Bulgarian army roams the streets of her hometown looking to finish the job, an exhausted enemy soldier clambers over Raina’s balcony seeking refuge.

She’s scared, then fascinated. He’s armed -- but with chocolate -- and dangerous in unexpected ways: Turns out this desperate Capt. Bluntschli, a Swiss soldier for hire, has the real dirt on Sergius’ charge. It seems that Bulgarian attack succeeded only because the Serbians’ ammunition happened to fail. Suddenly Raina’s champion looks more fool than gallant, much to our heroine’s pique.

Her notions of heroism deliciously under siege, Raina finds her feelings for her glorious betrothed shifting. Meanwhile, Sergius, exhausted by the burden of his virtue, chases the family maid, Louka (Abby Craden), who is nominally engaged to Nicolai (Paul Taviani). When the war ends abruptly and Bluntschli visits again -- this time through the front door, on official business -- Shaw’s carefully crafted mousetrap springs into high comic action.

And the cast is good for the game. Harahan’s moues are equal parts charm and a comeuppance waiting to happen, while Mark Deakins’ Sergius nearly strides off with the show. His mustache fairly curling with self-regard, Deakins goes way, way over the top, but in a hilariously outsized manner that vehemently sets Shaw’s themes center stage.

In his introduction to the play, Shaw declares “Arms and the Man” an attack on militarism, and he certainly takes swipes at our urgency to fetishize a uniform. But his larger target here is dictatorships of the mind and soul: any belief or behavior that muffles the mess that is a human being. Everyone in the play is on the verge of blowing a psychic gasket because they can’t -- won’t -- see past the rigidity of their own beliefs, and the collective pressure of their willed blindness powers the play’s terrific comic momentum.

Director Michael Murray teases out many, but by no means all, of the colors Shaw has on offer, and there are moments when the production teeters toward camp. As Raina’s father, Maj. Petkoff, Mark Bramhall blusters and fusses when he might have done better with a few sly asides. It’s up to Mikael Salazar’s deft, understated Bluntschli and Paul Taviani’s relentlessly pragmatic Nicolai to give the play much-needed ballast.

One serious objection: While the men looked dashing in their uniforms, the Petkoff women resemble refugees from a bridal discount store. If the intent was to suggest this family has more money than taste, costumer Julie Keen might have done so with a little more subtlety.

Sartorial choices aside, “Arms and the Man” offers a giddy vision in which falling in true love means ceding one’s most cherished -- and hence most suspect -- sense of self. Losing has rarely looked so good.

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“Arms and the Man”

Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale

When: Call for schedule or check www.anoisewithin.org

Ends: May 20

Price: $32 to $36

Contact: (818) 240-0910, Ext. 1

Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes