Major Barbara

Andrew Undershaft, a millionaire armaments dealer, loves money and despises poverty

His energetic daughter Barbara, on the other hand, shows her love for the poor by working as a Major in the Salvation Army

She sees her father as just another soul to be saved, but when the Salvation Army needs funds to keep going, it is Undershaft who saves the day

Is the Army right to accept money that has been obtained by 'Death and Destruction'?

Barbara is forced to question her philanthropic motives, and what she discovers tells her something new about the world and its ways

Fully of lively comedy and sparkling debate, Major Barbara is also one of Shaw's most powerful and forward-looking plays

As Margery Morgan says, while Shaw was responding to 'a material and cultural situation that is now part of history', his work still has relevance 'in a period when new technologies drive the globalisation of trade and the migration of populations ... and ancient forms of brutality and carnage have re-appeared'