Heartbreak House

Good, Old-fashioned Entertainment

Heartbreak House

by George Bernard Shaw

Rhinoceros Theatre Company, at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 3^rd June

Review by Andrew Mayot

Described by its author as “a fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes”, Heartbreak House was written by George Bernard Shaw during the First World War, and it was intended to say something about what Shaw termed “cultured, leisured Europe before the war”.  The script was published in 1919 and, in a preface, Shaw stated that he had been unable to find a West End manager willing to produce the play, not on grounds on quality, but because there was virtually no demand for “serious drama” during the conflict.  Curiously the play was first staged, in translation, at Vienna’s Burgtheater in November 1920 after the American premiere was postponed because of concern that it might influence the presidential election. 

While the play was panned in Vienna and even attracted boos, Heartbreak House was more successful in New York where it ran for several hundred performances despite concerns that one of the characters, Ellie Dunn, was “disturbed mentally” for having what will seem to modern audiences no more than a clear idea of what she wants out of life.  When it came to the British premiere at the Court Theatre in 1921, London audiences were less enthusiastic and London critics mixed at best, reserving most of their praise for the revolving set and a not yet ennobled Edith Evans as Ariadne.  In subsequent decades the play has been re-evaluated and it has been revived many times, notably at Chichester in 2000.

In 2023, with its theme of a complacent country in decline, Heartbreak House feels very much in tune with our times.  As Ellie, Anastasia Drew is by turns endearing and deceitful, landing somewhere between Diana Rigg and Aubrey Plaza in her various dealings with the male characters.  These by turn allow Shaw to remind us how much he loathes the English and Englishness. 

Playing Boss Langan, a plutocrat-with-a-secret, Robin Legard is very funny.  Oliver Tims makes lothario Hector Hushabye more than surely the most flamboyant moustache in South London, while satirising London’s wartime obsession with the long-running Chu Chin Chow by dressing up as a sheik.  Playing Ellie’s quietly reliable father Mazzini, Jim Trimmer turns in a solid performance as does Nigel Andrews, as Captain Shotover, an “ancient mariner” whose mind is increasingly all at sea. 

Shaw was a sexually frustrated misogynist – and, as ever, this shows in the women of Heartbreak House, caught up in a tangle of relationships that recalls the complexities of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  As Captain Shotover’s daughter Ariadne, a sparkling Mia Skytte provides the evening’s best moments when she demolishes her hopeless, hapless husband, the aptly named Utterwood, played by Joe Evans; and Fiona Smith, playing Ariadne’s sister Hesione, twinkles her way through the play as she papers over the more improbable aspects of Hesione’s character.  The cast is completed by Fran Billington and David Dadswell who add a level of panto to the play as, respectively, a maid and a burglar.  A word too for Priya Virdee’s excellent two-level set which is not used as well as it might have been, and for the technical team who turn in a generally effective performance. 

Heartbreak House is a good, old-fashioned drama with comedy, and this is a good, old-fashioned production by Rhinoceros Theatre Company.

Andrew Mayot, May 2023

Photography by Kim Harding