Heartbreak House at Shaw Festival: A Meandering Bourgeois Blues
The Shaw Festival's production of Heartbreak House is a meandering exploration of bourgeois blues, with a mechanical turtle crawling across the stage as a fitting metaphor for the play's slow-moving plot. Director Tim Carroll splits the three-act play into two parts, with the second part running nearly three times as long as the first. While the first part is lively and funny, thanks to Tom Rooney's dry humor as Captain Shotover, the second part feels endless and rubbery, like a turtle forever in search of its next sunning spot.
The play's genius lies in its Chekhovian approach to plot, with things happening and relationships splintering before bonding back together. However, Shaw is not particularly interested in the superficial trimmings of well-to-do romance. Instead, he frames the human drama within a more existential context: a brewing war that threatens to eradicate the English countryside. The play's timing is intentionally ambiguous, with exquisite costumes and a sparse set that suggest the First World War.
Within the walls of the Shotover estate, a far less life-threatening kind of trouble hangs in the air. Ellie Dunn, played by Allison Edwards-Crewe, is invited to a dinner party with her father and rich fiancé. Captain Shotover, played by Tom Rooney, may be losing his faculties, and his daughter Ariadne, played by Sochi Fried, has spent the past 20 years in Australia. Party hostess Hesione, played by Julia Course, toys with the women who fall in love with her husband Hector, played by Martin Happer. Ellie's competing feelings for her much older fiancé are clouded by his presumed wealth.
Over the course of nearly three hours, we watch the various couples profess their love for one another, only to yank their affections back when they're not reciprocated. Their champagne problems chafe with Shaw's usual brand of social critique, but when the group's comeuppance crash-lands into Shotover's back garden, the kaboom is powerful, if not quite enough to justify the second part's runtime.
A clever dramaturgical intervention by Carroll adds extra texture to the script, particularly in the first act. The addition of a butler and maid helps to break down the fourth wall between the action and the audience, creating an additional layer of class commentary as the lovers enter and exit Shotover's home.
In conclusion, Heartbreak House at Shaw Festival is a meandering exploration of bourgeois blues, with a mechanical turtle crawling across the stage as a fitting metaphor for the play's slow-moving plot. While the play requires patience and curiosity, it is intriguing, if not altogether successful, in its damnation of the English aristocracy.
