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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

"Major Barbara", strong cast offers intimate interpretation

As Ellis Professor of English and Liberal Arts John Bertolini mentions in his program notes, “unusual people” of idiosyncratic ambition inhabit Major Barbara. George Bernard Shaw writes the vast disparity between characters with a seamless naturalism that lays the groundwork for both fluid humor and startling contrast. Moreover, it allows successful transition between both to create a middle ground where truly evocative theater can occur.

It is in these moments that Major Barbara really triumphs, human features emerging from beneath heavy undertones of the parable.

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The audience finds initial inklings of this in the first scene: Lucy Van Atta ’12 plays the part of Lady Britomart, an ostensibly too-upright aristocrat bent on securing (and meddling with) the affairs of her children. Stephen, played by Nathaniel Rothrock ’12, assumes an amusing counterpoint to her control, highlighting her castrating stringency.  But Van Atta does not fall prey to the trap posed by her character — and indeed, the trap Shaw sets in writing each of his characters — and astutely leaves room for her development to come.

In the end, her care and insight into the role is rewarded upon the entrance of her estranged husband, Andrew Undershaft —played by Matt Nakitare ’10.5 —who throws the wrench into Lady Brit’s careful clockwork.  Though not the primary focus of the performance, the pair manages to develop a chemistry that breaks down the cautious poise of her exterior: we see Biddy, the loving mother and former lover, a character reflecting much more than first suspected.  It is to Van Atta’s credit that this transition develops organically — as an audience, we don’t need attention to be called to see the change.  We feel it.

But of course the play’s highest stakes lie on the eponymous shoulders of her daughter, played by Lilli Stein ’11.  Everything about her introduction to the plot seems secondary: she enters as a quarter of two couples, and the audience’s eye, drawn away by the striking figure cut by her sister Sarah, passes over her uniformed presence.  Her few lines allow us only a sketch of her being: as a character, she seems reduced to the impassioned blindness of a fanatic, stagnant in stasis.  We are left to wonder why Adolphus has any interest in her at all, and the only clue to the puzzle seems to be the special interest Andrew takes in her.

It is a confusing scene, replete with the dramatic irony of mistaking Stephen’s identity and the overhanging issue of his succession, which almost allows Barbara to be left in a performative wake of understatement.  As an unbelievable result, the scene rides on the myriad tensions and jolts the plot into gear.  The audience does not move into the next scene dissatisfied, but rather asking all the questions — consciously or not — that they should be asking.  It allows Barbara to carry the play’s progression in her own development; which, as Major Barbara unfolds, proves exponential.

When we encounter her later at the shelter, in her element, the true depth of her character is revealed as Stein brilliantly defies the dichotomy between faithful and enlightened.  There is a wisdom, a depth to her rhetoric in dialogue that conveys both compassion and belief.  Bill Walker (Kevin Thorsen ’11) provides the perfect platform for her transformation, which happens quietly while the audience is diverted to the exchange between Mrs. Baines (Lindsey Messmore ‘11.5) and Undershaft.  Upon his final appearance, she has broken her own mold of desperate devotion, and through the change she affects upon him, we see the newer, disillusioned Barbara becoming a foil to her former self.

This change comes to a head in the Undershaft factory, when the former Major comes to a point of self-revelation through the problem of her father, and of her fiancé, played by Willy McKay ’11.  Adolphus’s sudden inheritance proves to be the ideal trigger for her catharsis.  It is a role that McKay exacts with nuance and facile humor, and is undoubtedly among the jewels of the production.  McKay’s subtlety succeeds in completely avoiding the trap of two-dimensionality; he is never just his fiancé’s devotee, nor only the dry professor of Greek.  Instead, he balances humor, tenderness and understatement in the embodiment most fitting of Shaw’s writing.

Also worthy of note is a similarly acute awareness of performative naturalism present in Sarah Undershaft, as interpreted by Isabel Shill ’12.  Though her role is minor, Shill manages to make a great presence on stage, consistent and without a trace of over-acting.

Professor of Theatre Richard Romagnoli’s production of Major Barbara does remarkable credit to Shaw’s work, and will doubtless be remembered on the Middlebury stage for years to come.


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