Arms and the Man

"Arms and the Man" is a three-act play by the world-famous Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw, first staged in 1894 at the Avenue Theatre in London. The West End premiere of the play was George Bernard Shaw's first commercial success, from which his popularity as a dramatist began. It is one of the most frequently performed comedies by the Nobel laureate. Through the language of comedy, the text aims to mock public sentiments glorifying war, revealing their internal contradictions and excessive romanticization. Precisely because of this intention, the author chose for the play's title a quote from the English translation of the beginning of the ancient epic poem "Aeneid" by Virgil. Initially, the characters and the setting in the play are conventional, but in his pursuit of a realistic sound, George Bernard Shaw, advised by friends, decides to place the described relationships and events in the context of the recently concluded Serbo-Bulgarian War on the Balkans. Thus, the setting becomes the home of Officer Petkov in a small town near Dragoman in Bulgaria after the end of the Battle of Slivnitsa in 1885. What occupies John Malkovich in this text is both a critique of the romantic idea of war and the clash between love as a romantic ideal and reality. What is interesting to him is the huge amplitude between Shaw's fairy-tale world and the contemporary profane world of normalized feelings of crisis, human alienation, divisions, and unceasing military conflicts. War is no longer associated with ideas of heroism, self-sacrifice, freedom, and human dignity, but with suffering, horror, and death. John Malkovich creates a romantic anti-war comedy in which modernity will look at itself as through a magnifying glass, and its problems will reflect back to us even more palpably. In Bulgaria, "Arms and the Man" has been staged twice by Nikolai Polyakov under the title "The Chocolate Soldier" (in a translation by Georgi Stanchev, which was not published). His first production was in 1995 at the Drama-Puppet Theatre – Vratsa, for which he received the directing award at the National Festival of Small Forms. The second production was in 2000 at the Drama Theatre "Sava Ognyanov" – Ruse. Director John Malkovich stages Shaw's famous play for the second time in his career. In 1985, he directed "Arms and the Man" at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York. The production featured actors Kevin Kline (later replaced by Malkovich himself), Glenne Headly, and Raúl Juliá, and the performance enjoyed great audience interest and was performed over 100 times. John Malkovich is a world-famous American actor, director, and producer. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards and nominations for film, television, and theater, including the Emmy Award from the American television industry, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, awards from the film festivals in Karlovy Vary, Locarno, and Munich, two Oscar nominations, three Golden Globe nominations, and one British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) nomination. The actor is one of the founders of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.