A mustache enters a room, followed by a man.
Arms (and legs) all but abandon the man in this irresistibly comic revival of the George Bernard Shaw classic about romance and family discord in wartime 1890s Bulgaria.
And given the way the returning soldier Sergius (as played by Enver Gjokaj) jerks and twitches his way around the stage as he attempts to strike heroic poses, you’d think his limbs were being manipulated by a gang of drunken puppeteers.
The actor’s boldfaced comic approach proves to dovetail pretty wonderfully with director Jessica Stone’s framing of the character as one whose own ego is dragging him mercilessly through life; he’s like a guy holding the last anchor line on a runaway Zeppelin.
Weird as it may sound, his stiff gestural eccentricities even echo the involuntary salutes by the titular mad scientist in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” — another work that lampoons the glorification of war.
When: 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays (plus 2 p.m. June 3); 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays (no matinee June 6); 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through June 14.
But hang on: Did we just spend six paragraphs analyzing someone who’s not even the central character in the play?
That just might be saying something about the way Gjokaj’s bravura turn tends to cast an even bigger shadow over the production than his mustache (and seriously, you could pull up a chaise longue under that thing).
And it would be fair to wonder if that approach skews the play away from what should be a focus on the journey to maturity of Sergius’ fiancee, the swooningly romantic young Bulgarian Raina Petkoff (Wrenn Schmidt).
It would be fair. But given how flat-out funny Stone’s conception of the piece can be — with big assists from Schmidt, fellow lead Zach Appelman (as the bemused and pragmatic Capt. Bluntschli) and the rest of the cast — such objections feel a little crabby.
Besides, Shaw himself subtitled the 1894 work “An Anti-Romantic Comedy,” which gives a director some extra license to play with expectations.
The playwright’s own voice is more or less channeled through Bluntschli, the Swiss mercenary who blunders into Raina’s bedroom while fleeing Bulgarian troops (he’s fighting for the Serbs).
While still cooing over her portrait of Sergius, Raina warms to the ragged intruder, whom she deems the “chocolate cream soldier” for his practice of keeping sweets instead of munitions in his ammo pouch.
She and her flustered mother, Catherine (in an appealing turn by the four-time Oscar nominee Marsha Mason), wind up harboring the captain until he can make it to safety.
But director Stone, last at the Globe in 2014 with a wondrously funny “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” does wrap the show deftly with a stage picture that neatly captures Raina’s newfound sense of identity.