Love is a battlefield
Stuck in a Bulgarian backwater, Raina Petkoff has been reading too many romance novels. She wants adventure, she wants love, she wants to get the hell out of town. So, when a charming Swiss soldier on the hop from the battlefield clambers into her bedroom, what’s a clever, practical-minded girl to do? Offer him sanctuary, feed him chocolate and fall in love. It’s only natural.
George Bernard Shaw’s classic play takes its title from the opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid. Like Aeneas, Shaw’s Swiss officer is a man wandering away from defeat, but with his trademark verbal dexterity and wit, Shaw subverts the epic. Dialling up the romance and keeping plenty of room for irony, he gives us a playful love story of brilliantly drawn characters, while also poking fun at the vanity, false heroism and supposed nobility of the 19th century battlefield.
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RAINA PETKOFF
(23-year-old daughter of the Petkoffs; proud, idealistic, feisty, compassionate)
CATHERINE PETKOFF
(40’s/50’s – mother of Raina, wife to the Major; strong, opinionated, loyal.)
LOUKA
(20’s – female servant in the Petkoff household; haughty, ambitious, unsophisticated)
CAPTAIN BLUNTCHSLI/THE MAN
(30’s – Swiss army officer; pragmatic and honest.)
MAJOR PETKOFF
(50s – father of Raina, husband to Catherine; blustering and gregarious.)
SERGIUS SARANOFF
(Late 20s-early 30’s – Raina’s fiancé; charming, cunning, proud.)
NICOLA
(30’s/40’s – Head servant of Petkoff household; serious, loyal, discrete.)
RUSSIAN OFFICER
(20’s/30’s – Russian military officer; cameo role)