When we think of George Bernard Shaw, the first qualities that come to mind are a brilliant comic gift and an incisive, yet essentially kindly eye for social satire. It is sometimes difficult to remember that the playwright was also a serious thinker with serious, if now some what outmoded, philosophical ideas that he incorporated in many of his major plays. In this vein, a particularly successful fusion of comedy and philosophy is "Man and Superman," now enjoying a lively and stylish presentation at the American Repertory Theatre.

On the surface, "Man and Superman" is a delightfully Shavian romantic comedy which reverses conventional roles by making the woman the vigilant pursuer and the man the hapless prey. The woman, Ann Whitefield (Kristin Flanders), is past mistress of twisting men around her little finger, and she has designs on her childhood companion, Jack tanner (played with dynamic vigor by Don Reilly), a young man and a decided taste for overbearing oratory. Much to his consternation, Jack is appointed one of Ann's guardians after her father's death--the other one being a confirmed old conservative, Roderick Ramsden (Alvin Epstein).

Convinced that Ann intends to marry their mutual friend, Octavius Robinson (Scott Riley), Jack persists in his wilful blindness until his chauffeur (Stephen Rowe) reveals the real state of affairs to him. Aghast at the thought of becoming her prey, Jack flees to Spain, only to be taken captive in the Sierra Nevada mountains by band of brigands led by an appealingly urbane character called Mendoza (Jeremy Geidt). In the end, the wayward Jack is finally reclaimed by the tenacious Ann, who tracks him down, accompanied by the entire party.

Usually omitted from most staged versions of the play, but included in this production, is the central scene in which Jack dreams that he is in Hell, recast as the famous Don Juan, with Ann as Dona Ana, Ramsden as the stone statue of Ana's father, and Mendoza as the Devil himself. But this Hell is the refuge of people bored by Heaven, such as the Statue; the Devil is an amiable aesthete with a nihilistic view of man's destiny; and Don Juan himself is a man bored by the mindless hedonism of Hell and consumed with the idea of a Superman--a being detached from crude physicalities and endowed with a perfection of intellect that marks the final step of human evolution. Don Juan and the Devil engage in a lengthy debate that ends with Don Juan's going off to Heaven for more thorough contemplation of his ideas.

What remains, however, and what ties the dream back to earth is the idea of the life force which inexorably draws men to women. The life force fuels the positive evolution that allows man to reach the ultimate status of Superman. When Dona Ana concludes the Hell Scene with her cry, "Then my work is not yet done!" we know what is in store for her modern-day counterpart (and don Juan's) upon the latter's waking.

Reilly shines as Jack/Don Juan, triumphantly maintaining both a flawless upper-middle class British accent and, more importantly, a breathless vitality that makes us understand what attracts Ann to such a unchivalrous, preachy windbag. In the purely sexual sense of the life force, he goes one better than Flanders. who plays up an engaging slyness as the predatory Ann, but falls a little short of projecting the mysterious feminine fascination that captures Jack against his will.

The rest of the cast is as solid as one might expect from the ART. Some of the actors choose to exaggerate the comic tendencies of their characters: Ripley turns the incurable romantic, "Ricky-Ticky-Tavy" Octavius into a singing, simpering, sentimental fool; Jack Willis, in a minor satiric role as an American industrialist buying his way into ancient English titles and estates, makes a caricature of himself with his loud, hearty declamations and zestful crudeness of manner. Geidt lacks Mephistophelian finesse as both Mendoza and Satan, but is nicely balanced by Epstein who is superb as the stiffly and stuffily pompous Ramsden/Statue. And Rowe is highly diverting as the laconic chauffeur (H)enry Straker--Shaw's representative of the ideal working-class man, contempt for the bourgeois.

The stage is extended to a T-shape, drawing the audience closer to the play's action. The production has a lot of visual flair, evidenced in the spare yet cleverly suggestive sets, from the lofty bookcase and long cluttered table of Ramsden's study to the fiery red sun and mountains of Spain (complete with appropriately "Spanish" guitar music) to an eerily empty darkness that gives way to the red glow of Hell. The last scene, set in a garden in Granada, features a fountain filled with round, orange objects that tease the eye until Jack Willis picks one up and begins peeling it.

Other staging effects contribute to the half-serious tone of the play: the Devil rises up from beneath the stage with a fine ominous flourish that is quickly and comically undercut by the revelation of his face, and the strains of Mozart's Don Giovanni are continually succeeded by Shavian reversals of the famous legend. Costumes, too, are magnificent, including a perfect reproduction of the turn-of-the century upper-middle class English motorist's get-up (frock coat, cap and goggles) and the impressively stony garb of the Statue.

There is one serious drawback to this otherwise seamless production: the inclusion of the hell episode, which makes a better read than a dramatic scene. Not that the actors and director David Wheeler don't have a damn good try at making it work. The debaters deliver their arguments with conviction and fluency, and the director attempts to break up the essential monotony of a dialectic discussion through physical movement and some pleasant comic touches: Mendoza's four brigands become four devils, horns and all, who periodically cross the stage with admirably solemn expressions, replenishing drinks and once bearing a crucifix that is passed around like a specimen "on view."

But their best efforts still cannot prevent the sequence from dragging under the weight of the long speeches by Don Juan and the Devil. While the philosophical discussion is crucial to understanding Shaw's purpose in writing this play, it also interrupts the action and tends to lose the audience's interest. As the Statue puts it, "This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan. If you would stick to the concrete and put your discoveries in the form of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women, your conversation would be easier to follow." While this remark shows that he has completely missed Juan's point, it does highlight the challenges of staging this scene.

This is not the fault of the presentation but rather of Shaw, who never hesitated in subjugating his role as a dramatist to what he felt were his duties as a social crusader. Nonetheless, "Man and Superman" remains one of Shaw's most intriguing and memorable plays, and the ART has succeeded brilliantly in bringing it to new life on stage.