Character guide

Andrew Undershaft

major

Also known as Undershaft, Mr. Undershaft, St. Andrew Undershaft

The fabulously wealthy munitions magnate who cheerfully admits he sells death, yet argues his cannons and his cash are the only honest forces in a hypocritical world.

Adolphus Cusins

major

Also known as Cusins, Dolly, Adolphus

A Greek scholar and Barbara's fiancé who lets Undershaft's burgundy wreck his moral basis, then wonders whether the Prince of Darkness has bought his soul.

Stephen Undershaft

supporting

Also known as Stephen, Stephen Troubled

The conventional son and heir who recoils from the family trade — at Harrow they called him the Woolwich Infant — yet has no income of his own.

Bill Walker

supporting

Also known as Bill, Mr. Walker, Bill Walker

A rough, violent man who storms into the Salvation Army shelter demanding satisfaction, and finds its officers far harder to bully than he expected.

Peter Shirley

supporting

Also known as Shirley, Peter, old Peter Shirley

A weathered old laborer thrown out of work by the very factory system he once served, Shirley carries his socialist convictions with quiet, unbroken dignity.

Sarah Undershaft

supporting

Also known as Sarah, Sarah Dolly

Sarah Undershaft, Barbara's younger sister, is a sensible, slightly exasperated young woman engaged to the cheerfully empty-headed Cholly Lomax and content to let others carry the moral weight.

Jenny Hill

supporting

Also known as Jenny, Jenny Glory

Jenny Hill is a young Salvation Army officer whose fierce, unguarded devotion to saving souls leaves her dangerously exposed to every emotional current that sweeps through the shelter.

Mrs. Baines

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Baines

Mrs. Baines is the Salvation Army's senior commissioner, a woman whose weathered pragmatism about money and souls keeps the shelter running even as her faith strains under the weight of it.

Snobby Price

supporting

Also known as Price, Snobby

Snobby Price is a sharp-eyed cynic who works the Salvation Army shelter for what he can get, performing penitence with the same practiced ease he once used to dodge honest work.

Rummy Mitchens

supporting

Also known as Rummy, The Woman Rummy Mitchens

Rummy belongs to the destitute crowd that Barbara Undershaft's shelter exists to save, and she knows the charity game well enough to play along with its hymns and testimonies. Her weary, sardonic gratitude exposes the gap between the Army's spiritual ambitions and the plain bodily needs of the poor it shelters. She matters because her presence forces the play's early argument about whether saving souls can ever be separated from feeding bodies.

Major Barbara Undershaft

major

Also known as Barbara, Barbara Undershaft, the Major, Major

A Salvation Army major in uniform who believes her father's tainted money can be laundered through charity — until he offers to buy her soul outright.

Lady Britomart Undershaft

supporting

Also known as Lady Britomart, Lady Brit

Barbara's formidable mother, a Whig aristocrat who summons her estranged husband home to settle the succession and cannot resist straightening his tie mid-quarrel.

Charles Lomax

supporting

Also known as Lomax, Cholly, Charley Lomax

Cholly Lomax is a wealthy, amiable young man whose vacant cheerfulness and total absence of conviction make him the perfect ornament for a society that never asks him to think.

Morrison

minor

The Undershaft family butler.

Todger Fairmile

minor

Also known as Todger

A strongman converted by the Salvation Army, mentioned by others.

Sir Horace Bodger

minor

Also known as Bodger, Sir Horace Bodger

A wealthy distiller who donates to the Salvation Army.

Lord Saxmundham

minor

A peer mentioned as a potential donor to the Salvation Army.

Bilton

minor

A character mentioned in passing, possibly a servant.

Mog Habbijam

minor

Also known as Mog

A woman mentioned in the shelter, possibly a prostitute.

Biddy

minor

A minor character mentioned in the shelter.