IT is more than 20 years since George Bernard Shaw’s anti-war satire Arms and the Man was seen on the professional stage in the west country, and Su Gilroy’s new production for her summer rep company at Lyme Regis underlines the question “Why has it been so long?”

Shaw might be known for his rather wordy, worthy approach to drama, but this production hilariously demonstrates how, with a multi-talented team of actors and a full-on approach to the idiocies and idiosyncracies of men and war, he could provide not only a thought-provoking look at the “science” of battle but create a richly funny and timeless comedy of manners and emotional blindness.

It is 1885 and Raina and her mother Catherine are waiting at their rather grand house in Ruritania while General Petkoff is off leading the troops against the Serbians. Raina is engaged to the scion of another rich family, a buffoon called Sergius Saranoff who has impetuously led his men into a victorious skirmish – or was it just that his horse had bolted?

While all this was going on outside, a handsome soldier from the opposing side had shinned up the drainpipe to Raina’s bedroom to hide from his pursuers. Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary once enamoured by the romance of battle, is now much keener on the chocolate creams of his homeland. He’s dog-tired and starving … and Raina is enraptured. She denies his presence in the room, and when the hue and cry dies down, he vanishes back down the drainpipe, wearing Gen Petkoff’s old coat for disguise.

Four months later, when the war is over and the opposing sides are now friends, with the General and the disillusioned Saranoff home, there’s a knock on the door and the Swiss soldier appears. It’s a surprise when the General greets him like an old friend, rapidly calling on his vastly superior military expertise to organise a complicated movement of troops.

You might guess how it continues …

It is hard to imagine a better cast for this delightfully enjoyable play, which manages to bring out all the humour of the story as well as its more serious message, and totally banishes the fusty image of the seaside summer rep at the same time.

Jessica Olim and Tom Everatt (who you might remember from several Festival Players open air tours) have the immediate chemistry needed for Raina and her Chocolate Cream Soldier, with Andrew Fettes booming charismatically as the General, Jodie Glover relishing the wisdom of the determined and duplicitous maid Louka, James Taylor-Thomas as the servant who knows his place, Victoria Porter as a Catherine who is VERY sure of hers and Hayden Coward as the preposterous Sergius.

Don’t go to Arms and the Man looking for cutting-edge drama, but for the fun and enjoyment we all need right now, with a message writ large in these vainglorious Trumpian days.

GP-W