Word: heartbreaking
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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AFTER SEEING a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, George Bernard Shaw said, "I feel as if I want to tear up all my plays and begin all over again." Soon afterwards he began writing Heartbreak House. Although he subtitled the remarkable work "A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on an English Theme," the played turned out to be a quintessentially Shavian treatment of "cultured, leisured" British society before World...
...substitute for more complete characterization, and the constant action sometimes seems effected by too improbably contrivances. Though the atmosphere is consistent, the politics of the play are occasionally confused. It is perhaps this mixture of virtue and vices that have caused critics to make diametrically different judgments upon Heartbreak House. While some have pronounced it Shaw's best work, others have dismissed it as "tiresome...
Though the fantasia is perhaps not its author's best, it is hardly tiresome. The world of the play exudes an almost magical aura--one that is certain to attract critical attention, if not always praise. Casting the apocalytic spell, the Harvard Summer School Repertory Theater's rendition of Heartbreak House is unquestionably the Loeb's best production. The company seems to hit its stride with Shaw's difficult play. All the elements of theater--acting, directing, set and light and costume design--are functioning at their best in this third of three plays in repertory...
...Ariadne), equal the women in skill, if not charm. Terrence Currier and Bernard Frawley, both excellent in Moon for the Misbegotten, are again assets to the production as the charming prevaricator Hector Hushabye and Ellie Dunn's mild-mannered, yet understanding father Mazzini. Really all the inhabitants of Heartbreak House--except the industrialist who may represent the type that is leading Europe over the brink of disaster--manage to make themselves, as Ellie's father describes them, "very charming people, most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, humane, unconventional, democratic, free-thinking, and everything that is delightful to thoughtful people." Yet as these...
Senelick's kind of expertise (echoed in varying degrees by the other actors), together with the excellence and complexity of the repertory's two other offerings, Moon for the Misbegotten and Heartbreak House, make an interesting Loeb summer season likely. Notwithstanding its flaws, even The Matchmaker is amusing...