After Germinal Stage Denver’s 14 productions of George Bernard Shaw in its 32 seasons, one might wonder why it waited until this year to produce “Heartbreak House,” Shaw’s favorite play and arguably his best. By the end of the evening, however, there can be no doubt that director Ed Baierlein’s timing couldn’t be better.
As Shaw wrote in his preface to the work, “Heartbreak House” isn’t merely the name of the play or its setting: It is “cultured, leisured Europe” before World War I. Yet, as is always the case with great art, its import is universal, and this play provides telling commentary on imperial machinations.
Set in the hill country of north Sussex, on the grounds of a house built by a former seafaring captain to resemble a ship, the story captures a day in the life of a group of English gentry.
Ellie is an attractive young woman betrothed to Mangan, a stodgy, middle-aged industrialist. She is invited by the captain’s daughter, Hesione, to visit, intending to get her friend to break off the May-September relationship. Meanwhile, Hesione’s long-lost sister, Ariadne, returns home after an absence of 23 years and immediately attracts the romantic attentions of her sister’s randy husband, Hector, who, it is discovered, has been leading on Ellie for years, under an assumed name.
At the periphery of this menagerie are Ellie’s thoughtful father, Mazzini, whose business has been ruined by Mangan, Ariadne’s blubbering brother-in- law Randall, who pines for her, and the tippling maid, Guinness. Only the retired captain, it seems, under the guise of dementia, can make any sense of all this.
White-bearded with a drooping eye, and toting a cane as much for authoritative effect as structural support, Baierlein as Capt. Shotover is the perfect stand-in for the venerable playwright and Nobel laureate. He dispenses wisdom with the ease of a rum-lubricated mariner who has found what he calls, “the seventh degree of concentration.”
Creating a splash in a white lace period dress, the first of many dazzling costumes by Sallie Diamond, Kristina Denise Pitt as Ellie is every bit the innocent, nubile offering. That is, until in an inspired turn of the tables she exhibits her hidden seasoning, first as a gold digger, and later as the wild-card seeker with a heart of gold.
Suzanna Wellens is fetching as the outspoken and free-spirited Hesione, who has fallen not far from the same tree as that of her combative sister, Ariadne, a playful Lisa Mumpton. It’s no surprise they both are attracted to the dashing Hector, a debonair, mustachioed figure cut by Stephen Kramer. Michael A. Parker, Chuck Wigginton, Jacob T. Morehead and Laura Booze round out the talented ensemble.
As with Chekhov and Tolstoy, the idle rich come off badly, squandering their lives and resources in pursuit of social position and material gain. But with Shaw, more than perhaps any other playwright excepting Shakespeare, the discussion flows so naturally and evenhandedly that we are left to wonder how he avoided sounding preachy or didactic. Therein lies his genius.
Shaw shares his political and social concerns with us literally in his preface.
He notes that “swindlers were emboldened to take offices, label themselves Anti-Enemy Leagues, and simply pocket the money that was heaped on them.” That “soldiers were acquitted, even on fully proved indictments for willful murder.” And that “the war maniacs made a frantic rush to abolish all constitutional guarantees of liberty and well-being.”
In the play itself he leisurely establishes the motivations of his characters in the first act, thus freeing his biting commentary, wrapped within well-turned personalities, to flow without pretense from their mouths in the second and third acts.
Given the devastation of the wars that followed Shaw’s prescient warnings, it is well worth our while to take his advice seriously. It goes down so easily in this clever black comedy!
Bob Bows reviews theater for KUVO/89.3 FM, at ColoradoDrama.com and for Variety. He can be reached at BBows@ColoradoDrama.com.
*** 1/2 | Heartbreak House
DRAMA|Germinal Stage Denver, 2450 W. 44th Ave.|Written by George Bernard Shaw|Directed by Ed Baierlein |Starring Kristina Denise Pitt, Baierlein, Lisa Mumpton, Suzanna Wellens, Stephen R. Kramer, Michael A. Parker, Chuck Wigginton, Jacob T. Morehead and Laura Booze|THROUGH OCT. 9|8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 25 minutes|$14.75-$18.75|303-455-7108
