The Review - THEATRE by SONIA ZHURAVLOYVA Published: 20 September 2007
Since my baby left me...
HEARTBREAK HOUSE Bridewell Theatre
REMINISCENT of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Heartbreak House – the family drama reputed to be one of Shaw’s favourite plays – takes place in 1914 in a house on the Sussex coast, inhabited by retired humbug Captain Shotover, jovially played by Robert Pennant Jones. His terribly posh daughter Hesione (Kate Walsh) lounges about their bohemian sitting room while her husband, the roguish Hector (Gately Freeman), is busy seducing Ellie Dunn (Faye Poskitt), a virginal friend of the family.
Hearts are broken left, right and centre when Hesione’s younger sister (who seems older than her sibling in this production) returns from many years abroad and is not recognised by her father or her sister.
Money is central to the play. The characters are either short of it, lie about how much of it they have or want to marry for it, and the men are slaves to the ‘gorgeous females’ who govern their hearts and their purse strings.
The characters are completely self-centred and pleasure-seeking and for all their pretty, rather long-winded chatter, they fail to really see what is happening around them.
They find the WW1 bombs that fall around them a ‘marvellous experience’, for example.
Shaw’s exasperation with the educated classes – the fact that they turned a blind eye and did not use their education and social connections to try to stop the war or help the lot of the common man – is strongly felt in this biting and beautiful production. Until September 22
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