Jericho Arts Centre to June 21, 2026
Tickets: Adult $37; Senior $32; Student (with ID) $15 at www.unitedplayers.com
Posted June 1, 2026
George Bernard Shaw is considered by some to be the greatest English-language dramatist second only to Shakespeare and yet his plays are produced relatively infrequently. This year the celebrated Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake includes one Shaw play – Heartbreak House – in a playbill of eleven plays. I think the last time the Arts Club mounted a Shaw play might have been the 2014 production of St. Joan directed by Kim Collier and starring the magnificent Meg Roe in the title role. Alley Theatre presented Mrs. Warren’s Profession, featuring the always amazing Linda Quibell, that same year at the Rickshaw Theatre in the heart of the DTE. So, if Shaw is so great, why aren’t his plays showing up with the same frequency as Shakespeare’s?
Because they’re hard to get right. Comedy? Drama? Farce? Social commentary? Political polemic? Hard to tell. And this United Players production of Arms and the Man, directed by Lauren Taylor, struggles mightily with this problem. Some characters – especially Madame Petkoff (Lauren Kirsten Robek) and Major Petkoff (Raphael Kepinski) – are played for farce: wildly exaggerated performances, completely over the top. Sergius Saranoff (Brandon James Gilbert) and Raina Petkoff (Hannah Everett) are played for comedy although they, too, slip into farce on occasion. Captain Bluntschli (Jay Clift) and Louka (Kiyomi Hoover) are played straight up and consequently are the most relatable and the most successful characters. Indeed, in this production, Louka’s story gradually takes over: it is this servant girl’s trajectory that becomes the most interesting.
The story: it is November 1885, Bulgaria. The Serbo-Bulgarian war is winding down; the Serbs have been defeated and are in retreat. Alone in her bedroom, young Raina Petkoff is startled by Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary fighting for the Serbs, who crashes into her boudoir and seeks refuge. Raina, engaged to Bulgarian war hero Sergius Saranoff (who isn’t actually much of a hero), is full of ideals about heroism, patriotism and war but Bluntschli sets her right: war is hell and heroism is all about staying alive. Not completely convinced she nevertheless takes pity on him and she and her mother disguise him in one of Raina’s father’s coats and let him make his escape. Of course, Raina falls for Bluntschli and he for her – or there wouldn’t be a story.
Parallelling this romance is the story of Louka, the Petkoff family’s maid, who is promised to Nicola (Victor Vasuta), a manservant in the Petkoff household. She has no hope of ever becoming anything other than a servant and she has to bear the advances of Sergius despite the fact that he is engaged to Raina. Upstairs and downstairs: different rules depending on social status. As a servant, she has no standing.
Actor Jay Clift really knows what he’s doing. His Captain Bluntschli is charming, witty and pragmatic as Raina’s “chocolate cream soldier” – so called because of the character’s love of Swiss chocolate creams. Clift never overplays the role; he simply gives us the character without embellishment.
Louka is at the wrong end of the social hierarchy. Hoover plays her in a straightforward, realistic manner: no petulance or histrionics. It’s a lovely, understated performance and makes Shaw’s point about the hypocrisy of the class structure. In the best of all worlds, Bluntschli and Louka would end up together. But that’s another play entirely.
Director Taylor obviously had a vision for this play and one that is broader and more farcical than Shaw might have envisioned. Interestingly, in the review of the 2014 Shaw Festival’s Arms and the Man directed by Morris Panych, the reviewer complained that Panych hadn’t taken advantage of the considerable humour in the script; he went on to write that in an earlier Shaw Festival production of the play (2006), the director had tried to make it funnier than it was. Neither production, according to that critic, got it right: one not funny enough; the other, too funny and therefore not funny.
Shaw is difficult.
Not difficult at all is appreciating the amazing costumes – especially one dazzler of a shell pink and green gown on Everett and another red-ruffled one on Robek – created by Brodie Davison. Alison Green’s set – a three-panelled interior – looks authentic, late-19th century Bulgaria complete with a large stove that looked like it would heat the whole outdoors. You can’t do Shaw on the cheap and clearly United Players did not stint on this production.
And you can’t fault United Players and Shaw for lacking relevance: with wars raging and MAGA celebrating the fire power of the USA, Shaw’s commentary on war is apt. When does simple patriotism turn into aggression? Who defines heroism? And still difficult today is finding the delicate balance between idealism and pragmatism. You might ask Prime Minister Mark Carney how he’s doing with that.