Anti-war farce amusing, but time has dulled point

GEORGE Bernard Shaw's anti-war farce Augustus Does His Bit takes dead aim at the hypocrisy of British high society, whose members compel the lower classes to go off to battle while they never get near the front.

As presented by Winnipeg's Merlyn Productions for ShawFest, the Irish playwright's object of mockery is Lord Augustus Highcastle, a self-important but incompetent recruiter located in the aptly named irrelevant town of Little Pifflington. The 1916-set, one act drama today feels like a Shavian TV sitcom missing only a laugh track.

The playlet's title is meant to be ironic and that is made clear the moment the lights at the Ellice Theatre come up on Augustus, immaculately turned out in his colonel's uniform sitting with his feet up on his spotless desk reading about the war in the newspaper. He is not doing his bit, other than sitting on 37 royal commissions while badgering and bullying working stiffs to do their bit for the war effort.

And he even does that poorly. Recently the mustachioed Augustus gave a rousing recruiting speech in which not one man signed up. Apparently part of his selling pitch was the fact British soldiers were "falling a thousand a day... dying for Little Pifflington."

Costumes trump comedy in dated plays

THE troupe's name suggests an ultra-skimpy budget. But Winnipeg's amateur Shoestring Players have mounted a Russian-flavoured comedic double bill for ShawFest in extravagantly beautiful period dress.

Set and costume designer Robert Butler, who does this as a hobby, apparently whipped up the opulent gowns and impressive military uniforms himself. The women in the first play, set in the imperial court of St. Petersburg in 1776, also wear stunningly elaborate wigs. The sets are full of rich fabrics and painterly touches.

At the end of the one-hour Great Catherine and the 25-minute Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, however, there's a sense that it was an awful lot of effort for the sake of two obscure Shaw works that mainly come across as time-warped curiosities.

The plays are both silly farces, their tone reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

Marry, Marry, quite contrary

GEORGE Bernard Shaw's 1934 one-act Village Wooing was once critiqued as "hardly a play at all, being a dialogue without action."

It may be dwarfed in dramatic heft by major works such as Pygmalion, Candida and Saint Joan, but the Shavian shortie is a charming romantic entanglement between two mismatched lovers who meet on the deck of a cruise ship. As directed by Krista Jackson, Village Wooing is near perfect in style and its execution by Graham Ashmore and Tracy Penner is the delight of ShawFest.

In their comic courtship pas de deux, the woman leads, although she is identified as Z in the script and the man is A, Shaw suggesting alphabetically they couldn't be further apart. She is a chatty, village shop girl/telephone operator who is blowing all of her winnings from a newspaper contest on an ocean cruise where she spies a well-dressed man by himself writing.

Ashmore's A is a prickly, stand-offish travel writer whose work is his proclaimed pleasure. The humourless widower wants to be left alone to his scribblings but she won't take the hint. The circumstance is one Shaw often encountered in his life, pestered to distraction by female admirers during his travels.

No sparkle in workmanlike Candida

Sparkling" is the adjective that's always used to describe Candida, one of George Bernard Shaw's early hits and an acknowledged classic.

An amateur company, the Tara Players, has made a valiant effort by mounting the 1894 drawing-room comedy about a threatened marriage.

But the ShawFest production at the Irish Club barely manages to glint with wit, let alone sparkle. At times it's positively leaden. Still, if you can look past its shortcomings, it's worth taking in as one of the key works in Shaw's oeuvre.

The Irish Club's cosy 85-seat theatre is one of the festival's most comfortable. And, as always, Shaw engages the intellect with biting commentary about gender roles, class privilege and religious, social and moral hypocrisy.

Wit, wisdom for sale at whor… er, Warehouse

When George Bernard Shaw inflicted Mrs. Warren's Profession on Victorian society in 1893, one in every 36 women in London was a hooker, or one for every 12 males.

Despite its prevalence, prostitution was then a taboo subject in polite society making it a natural subject for a an emerging literary provocateur like Shaw who was looking for theatrical notoriety by pushing the truth that the sex trade was not caused by female depravity but economic necessity.

Mrs. Kitty Warren's occupation is madam of a string of European brothels for which the title serves as euphemism. Shaw never mentions the word prostitute or whorehouse or any synonym but everyone knew what he was talking about and his morality play was widely banned or rejected as immoral.

Almost 120 years later at the start of ShawFest -- the Irish dramatist is being saluted at this year's Master Playwright Festival -- his infamous social critique may have lost its ability to shock but not to entertain with sparkling wit. But even that sometimes is blunted by his didactic nature, an annoying penchant for explanatory speech-making and lack of action.

Drama king

IN FLAMES: Jan. 25, Burton Cummings Theatre, 8 p.m. Swedish metal band. With Trivium, Veil of Maya, Kyng. Tickets $33 and $41.50 at Ticketmaster.