(photo: Christopher O. Banks)

Washington City Paper
Trey Graham

On the Rocks George Bernard Shaw's rambling late-career takedown of British imperial politics opens with a country at war, an economy in recession, and an increasingly restless unemployed population--plus an initially feckless chief executive who's gambling, by way of response, that "a bit of sentiment about the family always goes down well." Before he's finished, the playwright chucks in observations on the exporting of jobs, politicians who go out of their way to make wars, and the paralyzing parochialism of special interests.

There's a zinger every minute, a tough-minded truth just as often, and great chunks of the play could have been written yesterday. On the Rocks is more an assortment of arguments than a collection of characters, and it's as slow to start as it is about wrapping up its business, but the play's keen political satire makes it a fat pitch across the plate for director John MacDonald and a solid cast of Washington Stage Guild regulars.

And if politicians take their share of lumps, the grand old man understands enough to know that voter apathy and short-sighted self-interest is part of what ails the body politic. His diagnosis is pretty sobering; as for a prescription, he leaves that up to us. (TG)

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