Hopkins Center for the Arts

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Dartmouth Department of Theater

Arms and the Man

by George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Jamie Horton

Thursday–Saturday, FEBRUARY 15–17 • 8 pm
Wednesday–Friday, FEBRUARY 21–23 • 8 pm
Saturday, FEBRUARY 24 • 2 pm
The Moore Theater
$12 • Dartmouth students $3
All other students $6

Click to download PROGRAM NOTES

The glorification of war. Heroics in battle. Blind idealism in romance. Lusty second glances. As would become his hallmark, the celebrated British playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), in his popular Arms and the Man, uses comedy to confront social problems and puncture inflated notions of idealism as well as theatrical and moral conventions of the day. Writing over 50 plays and winning both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, Shaw fuses brilliant thought with comic irony. Set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885-1886, Arms and the Man centers on a young woman engaged to a handsome Bulgarian soldier. But when a Swiss soldier fighting for the Serbs intrudes on her, with his sense of reality and humor, she must reassess the verity of her views. Alas, her fiancé, foolish but lucky on the battlefield, also wanders into another's arms. In the theater of war and love, it is the mighty Shaw who slices through illusion with wit as sharp as a sword.

The performance on Wednesday, February 21 at 8 pm will be American Sign Language interpreted.