About the Play:

Arms and the Man is a full-length comedy by Nobel prize-winner George Bernard Shaw. This witty masterpiece combines high comedy with social commentary in deflating romantic misconceptions of love, warfare, and the professional soldier. This play became the first success of George Bernard Shaw's dramatic career that spanned six decades and brought him world-wide renown. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

Arms and the Man is a delightful comedy satirizing the futility of war. Raina Petkoff is young, beautiful, and filled with romantic notions about love. She's all set to marry war hero Major Saranoff, but then the combat crashes through her window in the form a soldier fighting for the "other side." Intrigued, Raina agrees to hide him, but only after learning he carries chocolates instead of bullets. He then proceeds to disabuse her and those around her of the bogus romanticized ideals they have constructed around love, war, and social status. After the war ends, both rival soldiers return for their love, and that's when the real battle for Raina's heart begins. Arms and the Man is a charming satire-disguised-as-romantic-comedy that mixes smarts with silliness and adds just a dash of morality. George Orwell called it "the wittiest play" George Bernard Shaw ever wrote.

Arms and the Man was first produced in 1894 at the Avenue Theatre (later re-named The Playhouse Theatre) in the West End of London, and opened later that same year at New York's Herald Square Theatre. It was the first Shaw play ever to appear in North America. One of the most acted and studied of George Bernard Shaw's plays, it is regularly performed in regional, middle school, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Whilst it is over a century since [Arms and the Man] was first staged, the statements made are still relevant in the 21st Century as wars are still fought, society is still divided on money and young minds are still filled with romantic ideals." — BroadwayWorld.com

About the Playwright:

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although born in Ireland, he spent most of his adult life in England, and wrote more than 60 plays for the English stage. He won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest honour available to any writer in the world, and an Academy Award for the screenplay of Pygmalion in l938.