The place called “Heartbreak House” in George Bernard Shaw’s 1919 play of the same name is a Sussex estate owned by Captain Shotover, an eccentric old seafaring man who’s invented such useful items as a ship with a magnetic hull that pulls in submarines. But it may as well be the New York home of the bohemian Sycamore family, from Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You. Or the enchanted Athenian woods in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or the forest of Arden in As You Like It. Like all of those pieces of imaginative real estate, Heartbreak House is a privileged zone where rules are suspended, lovers are switched, pecking orders are reversed, and—strangest of all—people suddenly find themselves telling the truth.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
We meet superintelligent, intensely pragmatic Ellie Dunn and her father, Mazzini, a poor but upright would-be businessman named after Italian revolutionary Giuseppi Mazzini. Ellie is informally promised to aging industrialist Boss Mangan, but Mangan’s got a crush on Shotover’s daughter Hesione, a serial enthusiast, even though she’s already married to Hector Hushaby, a serial liar. Not that marriage is much of an impediment to romance where the Stopover clan is concerned. Hesione is too compulsively empathic to reject Mangan, and handsome, improvident Hector habitually woos attractive young ladies like Ellie with his extravagant fictions. Not to be outdone, Hesione’s sister, Ariadne, shows up, followed closely by her love-besotted puppy dog of a brother-in-law, Randall. There’s an interlude involving a burglar, too.
His primary proxy, anyway. Although Shaw was doing his best imitation of Chekhovian naturalism here, he didn’t moderate his usual didacticism. It would take—probably has taken—a master’s thesis to properly diagram the political architecture of this particular day in the British countryside. But some of the antagonisms that jump out have to do with rich vs. poor, women vs. men, young vs. old, propriety vs. decadence, innovation vs. exploitation, and the spirit vs. materialism.
Through 6/26: Tue-Wed 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $45-$65.
