‘Major Barbara’ breaks in a new venue with stylish grace

It’s a tradition in the theater: Instead of wishing an actor “good luck” backstage before a performance, you say, “Break a leg,” so nobody will.

It is not a tradition to offer the same wish to the audience members.

But such a custom might have been helpful at South Coast Repertory’s Saturday matinee performance of “Major Barbara” -- the first production at the shiny new Folino Theatre Center in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts -- when a visitor unaccustomed to the theater’s shallow new stairs and unworn carpet took a fall on the way to his seat. After that, arriving patrons got an anxious plea along with their program: “Pleeease, watch your step.”

But the man was OK, no limbs broken. And the new theater, a contemporary, streamlined wonder of glass curves and pale wood, proved a fitting home for the lively, crisp and elegantly staged “Major Barbara.”

This production starts off a bit stiff and self-conscious, and a few of the oddly affected British accents seem to sink on their way across the Atlantic. But things soon warm up under the deft direction of company artistic director Martin Benson, and George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play -- a three-hour diatribe on religion, morality, social class, charity, poverty, wealth, power, capitalism, socialism, pacifism and war -- never gets weighed down by its length or the heft of its subject matter.

Despite its strong and still relevant social messages, “Major Barbara” is also a festival of wit, a comedy of manners; this bright production wisely plays up the humor and absurdity of the situation and lets Shaw’s well-articulated political worldview speak for itself.

Shaw sets up the age-old debate over how best to rid the world of poverty through a conversation between millionaire arms manufacturer Andrew Undershaft (Dakin Matthews) and his daughter, Barbara (Nike Doukas), whom he has not seen since childhood, and who has grown up to be a proud major in the Salvation Army.

Surrounded by a dithering chorus of self-involved family members, father and daughter throw down a challenge to each other: Andrew will visit the Salvation Army to see how Barbara and her colleagues attempt to save the poor with a crust of bread and the promise of heaven -- but only if she will then pay a visit to his arms factory, to see how he has created a utopian society that pulls the poor from the gutter by offering them money and security in return for helping him build a fortune through death and destruction.

Though it’s clear by the end which argument Shaw favors, for an audience it may remain a matter of opinion. But when it comes to the actors’ performances, Matthews’ insolently charming Undershaft is the hands-down winner. His dryly whimsical delivery belies the steel of his words, and his ability to pledge his allegiance to money and gunpowder in the same tone one might order a nice spot of tea proves once again that the devil is almost always more interesting than the saint.

Doukas’ Barbara proves a weak adversary. She’s one of those cast members whose accent occasionally defies geography, and her energy and spunk seem forced and arbitrary, rather than inspired by any particular devotion to saving souls. Even within the context of the absurdity of the proceedings, the other characters achieve a naturalism that eludes Doukas, who merely comes across as shrill.

JD Cullum turns in a hilarious and strongly nuanced performance as Barbara’s intended, the Greek scholar Adolphus Cusins, struggling to rationalize his love for the daughter with his increasing admiration for the father. And Kandis Chappell radiates a world-weary common sense as the stolid Lady Britomart, whose faulty logic on most subjects never once prevents her from speaking her mind.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

‘Major Barbara’

Where: South Coast Repertory, Folino Theatre Center in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa; (714) 708-5555.

When: Tuesdays-Fridays 8 p.m., Saturdays 2:30 and 8 p.m., Sundays 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.

Ends: Nov. 17.

Price: $27 to $54.

Dakin Matthews...Andrew Undershaft

Kandis Chappell...Lady Britomart

Nike Doukas...Barbara Undershaft

John Hines ...Stephen Undershaft

Daniel Blinkoff...Charles Lomax

JD Cullum...Adolphus Cusins

By George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Martin Benson. Set by Ralph Funicello. Costumes by Shigeru Yaji. Lighting by Chris Parry. Music by Fredrick Lundeberg. Stage manager Randall K. Lum.