Heartbreak House

by George Bernard Shaw

directed by David Wheeler

at the American Repertory Theatre

through March 3

There is nothing more heartbreaking than to see good Shaw done badly. It is not difficult to concoct frothy entertainment from, say, Pygmalion or Misalliance, but Heartbreak House can so easily fall apart in the hands of a less than ideal production--as it does in this American Repertory Theatre rendition.

The intense symbolism of the play deteriorates into absurd melodrama; the bad attempts at making the bizarre characters seem attractive are irritating; and the very frustration of watching their slow descent into damnation makes your eyes glaze over.

Director David Wheeler seems convinced that this portrayal of overbred beauties and Hedonists just before the advent of World War I is a lightweight social comedy of manners, instead of what it is--a very angry criticism of the self-absorbed upper classes. There is a deep bitterness in Shaw's depiction of these characters, frittering away their energy in "kissing and coaxing [and] laughing" instead of being concerned about the state of the outside world.

The richness of Derek McLane's set design does much to make up for the heavy-handed direction and the flimsy acting. The play is set in a house which pretends to be a ship--a ship waiting to run itself aground because no one is willing or able to navigate it. The lush blue lighting falls on a mast with a furled sail, a writing desk bearing a huge ship's wheel and a coil of rope.

Unfortunately, most of the actors seem unable to give their characters enough depth of personality to make anyone feel very much involved in their eventual fate. After a two-hour performance, the Hushabyes and all their friends still feel like strangers.

Jeremy Geidt as Captain Shotover provides the best of the performances. He looks--intentionally or otherwise--like Shaw himself, with beetling brows and jutting white beard. Shotover is an 88-year-old man seeking to discover "the seventh level of concentration" through rum and running away from anything that upsets him. As the self-appointed captain of the ship, he is too old and infirm to be able to save it from destruction.

Margaret Gibson's version of Hesione Hushabye, Shotover's daughter, would be perfectly charming if the viewer only had to bear her company for 15 minutes or so. She makes a delightful first impression, with her endless charm and sinuous steps. Unfortunately, Gibson's method of delivering Hesione's absurd pieces of babytalk--such as "prettikins" and "daddyest"--is horribly artificial, and her languorous speech and movements seem too derivative of Morticia Addams.

Royal Miller, playing her lapdog/playboy husband Hector, is as stiff and starched as his shirt. The only time we can understand why squads of women supposedly fall in love with him occurs in a moment when he is leaping about alone on stage and snatches up an imaginary rapier in solitary swordplay, levelling it against a non-existent foe.

Tracy Sallows plays the naive young Ellie Dunn--the only person who has enough heart left to be broken at the time the play begins. She must discover that Shakespeare cannot help her cope with a shattered world--and yet, her growing disillusionment, as portrayed by Sallows, does not touch us.

Catherine Zuber's costume design comes close to salvaging the play. The lampshade dresses trail and flow and shimmer, and their colors serve to accentuate the personalities of the characters--who, considering the quality of the acting, need all the buttressing that they can get.

Hesione, in all the ripeness of mature beauty, wears a dress which is the seductive red of the proverbial apple of Eden; Ellie Dunn, when we first meet her, wears the green of spring and undeveloped innocence; while Ariadne Utterword--Hesione's cold sister who expresses a desire "to be respectable, to be a lady"--dresses in the whiteness of false modesty and conventionality.

Ultimately, the director is to blame for the failure of this production. Heartbreak House is not designed to be crammed into two hours. Wheeler makes it move at a breathless pace which offers the audience little time to assimilate the intricacy of Shaw's pessimistic vision, leaving them feeling confused and bored at the end.