Word: undershaft
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...firing line here are two mettlesome protagonists. Barbara Undershaft (Janet Amos), a major in the Salvation Army, proudly marches under its motto of "Blood and Fire" and does the Christian God's goodly work among the poor. Andrew Undershaft (Douglas Campbell), her munitions-tycoon father, marches under the maxim of "money and gunpowder." And yet this merchant of death is an apostle of life. His argument to Barbara is that he feeds and houses his workers so that they can find their souls, while she drugs the poor with a soup-kitchen dole...
...play is less polemical than comedic. It begins .with a family confab in Lady Britomart Undershaft's London town house. Long estranged from Andrew, the haughty lady (Betty Leighton) knows her select social turf, but that's all. Daughter Sarah (Janet Barkhouse) is enamored of a bean-brained fop (Briain Pet-chey) and Barbara is in love with Adolphus Cusins (Tom Kneebone), an impecunious teacher of Greek...
...underwrite these marriages, Andrew is most concerned that Barbara should be squandering her high passion on the Salvation Army. He agrees to see her shelter if she and Cusins will visit his cannon works. At the shelter, we meet sycophantic derelicts, ruffians and pitiably broken men. But it is Undershaft who nonchalantly breaks Barbara's heart, and opens her eyes. He signs a check for ?5,000, matching a sum from a notorious distiller named Bodger, so that the Salvation Army shelters may stay open. When the Army's general accepts the money, Barbara breaks down, sobbing, "Drunkenness...
...cold Shavian in Undershaft would say that only illusion has deserted her. He has previously expressed his creed to Cusins: "Have you ever been in love with Poverty, like St. Francis? Have you ever been in love with Dirt, like St. Simeon? Have you ever been in love with disease and suffering, like our nurses and philanthropists? ... I have been a common man and a poor man; and it has no romance for me." At the arms plant, with disconcerting alacrity, Barbara and Cusins accept the Undershaft inheritance, saying they plan to "make...
...course of the play, he inherits the proprietorship of six hotels) who displays his acumen by fleecing the Bulgarians during war treaty negotiations, of 50 prisoners of war for 200 flea-ridden horses. This is Bluntschli the mobile mercenary, the modern and disinterested man who, like Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara, sells his services to the highest bidder...