Theater of the most noxious kind, this disastrous revival of George Bernard Shaw's 1894 play Arms And The Man engages in the eye-rolling fop school of dramatics. Every performance is ten times more mannered than it needs to be, the art direction more involved than it needs to be, and the line delivery a lot more pronounced than needed. This is a production that bathes itself in excess but never seems to realize that subtlety is always the ticket to creating the best kind of human comedy, more like the kind Shaw had in mind when he wrote this play.
Raina (Katie Finneran) is a spoiled heiress currently residing in Bulgaria in the midst of a war when the frightened, impressionable Captain Bluntschli (Henry Czerny) literally bursts into her bedroom. She is oddly intrigued by the man and agrees to hide him out, which leads in expected misunderstandings later when her intended, the self-satisfied Sergius (played by Paul Michael Valley with all the discretion of a polo mallet hitting you on the head) and her parents, Catherine (Sandra Shipley) and Maj. Paul (Tom Bloom), who have their own views on war and her daughter's affairs. Ultimately, the play boils down to the men in Raina's life and the the meaning behind their motions.
If only anyone involved let the work breathe a bit, we may be treated to a charming diversion (this is not one of Shaw's greatest works). However, director Roger Rees (still know best as Robin Colcord from "Cheers") trumps everything up to a high-pitched decibel, resulting in the comedy slipping rapidly out of it. Finneran is lovely, but her portrayal is obvious and overdone and lacks a solid center. Even after the first act, we're still not sure what she's meant to embody, and then when it's over, we still don't. The supporting actors barely register here; all seem to be playing dress-up and talking in the same affected "theat-a" accents that we're supposed to find refined. They just sound false here, with the exception of Czerny, a wonderful actor who wisely doesn't embarrass himself but is still miscast. Czerny is an earthy, sexy actor who really should be playing Sergius, since his most noticeable film roles ("Mission: Impossible," "The Boys of St. Vincent") convey steely grace but a tortured soul, and he never seems to have to work for that effect the way Valley's strident performance does.
One endures a lot of shrieking, growling and affectations in this strained Roundabout production. One wonders when theater professionals will realize less is more and halt the busy-ness that only works if you are making the broadest of farces, and even then it can be tiresome. But, then again, a production this dismal can really only be called, well… a farce.
