Word: sergius
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bulgaria in the mid-1880s where the countrymen are defending themselves against the Servians. A Swiss mercenary who is employed by the Servians, Bluntschli, becomes for Raina her "chocolate cream soldier" by virtue of the moonlight encounter in which he reveals his fondness for food over bullets. Her fiance Sergius, Raina figures, is much braver than the smooth-talking Swiss, but only in the last five minutes of the play does the better...
...Sergius is an awesome assertion of a man with an uncompromising attachment to his heroic and romantic fustian. Rather than concede that his "higher love" for Raina is just or that his battlefield maneuvers are empty-headed, the idealist Sergius breaks down and crows cynically that the world is a hollow sham and life a farce. As Sergius, Timothy Cunningham and his perpetual scowl of a face execute the finest performance in the Loeb production. Cunningham brings to the role a pair of eyes that the properties manager could only have obtained from a ping-pong table...
...leads life "sensibly," or as Raina says at first, "with a low, shop-keeping mind," without staking itself to any lofty principle. Fifteen years of experience in war has taught Bluntschli that the most important principle is to save one's skin, and when the mortally offended Sergius ("Our romance is shattered") demands to meet him at sundown with his sabre, the Swiss submits bluntly that he will bring a machine gun. Clark plays the chocolate cream soldier competently if monotonously, as a debonair impostor. He is forever raising his eyebrows to convince the audience of his nonchalance...
ANOTHER SHAVIAN hero here is the shrewd servant Louka (played convincingly by Roberta Dahlberg) who without pondering irrelevantly about higher love, cashes in on Sergius's moral earnestness to gain a betrothal. Stephen Kolzak turns in a priggish performance as the servile servant Nicola. The casting that sets the tone for the production, however, is that of hulking Tom Shea and lisping Lois Pike as Raina's parents. They are real bulls in the china shop...