Sydney Theatre Company presents
ARMS AND THE MAN
by George Bernard Shaw

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.

Legendary director Richard Cottrell (Australia Day) helms the production, while Andrea Demetriades (Perplex) and Mitchell Butel (Romeo and Juliet) will launch themselves into the romance and the comedy with absolute relish.