Word: undershaft
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Undershaft: To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist . . . all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes.-Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara...
...play's essential conflict, or confrontation, is no less vital than it is fascinating. Opposed to the Salvation Army's idealistic, intransigent Barbara, a saver of souls, is her hardheaded munitions-making father, Andrew Undershaft, a destroyer of bodies. But the savers of souls, Barbara learns, are kept in funds by the destroyers of bodies. She further learns that her Merchant-of-Death father is an absolutely model boss, who regards poverty as the greatest of crimes and to thousands has proved a Bringer of Life...
...Undershaft's moral value does not stop with his offering one of the most trenchant of all indictments of poverty. It lies also in his demonstrating the folly of all absolute positions, in his showing how good and evil must always jostle and even beget one another. But Shaw, with his new non-reformer's zeal, turns extremist...
...just that where he once had the brothel-keeping Mrs. Warren's daugh ter break with her mother, he has the munitions-making Undershaft's daughter end up blowing kisses at her father. It is not that he should make Undershaft not only no villain but a charmer. It is that he should make him not only a charmer but a hero. It is that he should suggest that the best way to keep half the world well-fed is to blow up the other half...
...most dazzling facet of the new production is Charles Laughton's performance as Undershaft. He is as suave, smiling, easy of manner as he is pointed and cutting in effect. And given Shaw's fireworks, he contrives no histrionics. As the play's director, on the other hand, he has invented as many tricks of staging as has Shaw of thought. For a while the two showmen get in each other's way, though eventually they set each other off. This is partly owing to an accomplished cast, including Glynis Johns, Burgess Meredith and Eli Wallach...