STAGE REVIEW : SCR Season Opens With a Rich Revival of ‘Heartbreak’

It is arguably George Bernard Shaw’s most probing, prophetic, incisive, elegiac, Chekhovian, serious, sentient and heartbreaking play.

It is one in which he drops small aphoristic charges that jolt us from our torpor, especially when we realize that he wrote this play before World War I and that it foreshadowed the high level of 20th-Century self-destruction, including something he could have known nothing about: the coming of the nuclear bomb.

It is Shaw’s “Heartbreak House,” a riddle in a conundrum (to paraphrase another Englishman), representing a family mansion built like a ship, whose inhabitants sail fitfully through the storms of 20th-Century life.

Under the ever-more-assured hand of its in-house Shavian specialist, Martin Benson, South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa has mounted a muted but rich revival of this uncommon piece as its ‘91-92 season opener. Benson not only catches all the notes, but has assembled a stalwart company of sly and savvy actors that knows just how to pluck them.

The tone is autumnal and the setting shot through with a Shavian zaniness that is eventually shot down by the seriousness that grips Act III. The action encompasses an erratic weekend at the estate of the not-so-crazy retired old sea captain Shotover, where friends and acquaintances, a nurse (Patricia Fraser) and an interloper (Jeffrey Allan Chandler) mingle with Shotover and his two married daughters in Chekhovian permutations that bare everyone’s soul.

“Heartbreak” is about the truth in lies and the lie in truth, encased in a creeping despair for the human race as a whole, which Shaw sees as being in danger of shooting itself right out of the water.

When the play’s mental and sexual games are done, when daughter Hesione (Frances Conroy) has ceased running interference, and her sister, Lady Utterwood (Kandis Chappell), has stopped pouring ice over everything, and young Ellie Dunn (Devon Raymond) abandons her love for Hesione’s flamboyant husband, Hector (John Vickery), in favor of more calculating considerations, the sense of quiet desperation becomes pervasive.

In the end, everyone has given something up, even if it’s only the lie about or to themselves, such as, in Ellie’s case, the notion of love itself or even a wealthy mismatch with the fraudulent Boss Mangan (Richard Doyle) for an imaginary serenity with old Shotover (Paxton Whitehead made-up to look remarkably like Shaw himself).

Shaw’s third act is astonishingly reminiscent of the ending of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters.” (It’s that kind of weekend in the country.) But what Chekhov did not foresee, and what Shaw foresaw well beyond any existing signs, was the coming of a nuclear age that would disorder the world with fear.

John Iacovelli has provided an architecturally ingenious design for the house, while Shigeru Yaji has dressed everyone, especially Hector and the women, in understated eccentricity or good taste. But it is Paulie Jenkins’ lights and Michael Roth’s chilling music and sound that take precise atmospheric cues from the mood of the play.

Benson has derived a production that doesn’t want to dazzle so much as insinuate itself into our minds with all of the unsettling ramifications of Shaw’s thinking.

The three hours pass quickly, thanks to Shaw’s lunging ironies and his fundamental affection for his characters, no matter how pronounced their buffoonery, as in the case of Mangan and Hector, the well-meaning dullness of Ellie’s father, Mazzini (Hal Landon Jr.), or Lady Utterword’s worshipful brother-in-law, Randall (a stolidly dignified Dan Kern).

This is where it really helps to assemble actors who know style and ensemble-playing, even if they have not necessarily been this particular ensemble before.

They are brilliantly led by Whitehead as the moonstruck Shotover, a vigorous octogenarian in search of the Seventh Degree of Concentration who likes to keep the family guessing, much like the playwright who invented him.

No wonder he has so many of the best lines, including the salvo, “I drink now to keep sober.” There is still deeper meaning when he says of his habitat, “This is not my house, it’s my kennel,” echoed by Hector’s, “We do not live in this house; we haunt it.”

Vickery tends to overdo the flamboyance at some expense to Hector’s serious side and before the play comes to its ambiguous close, he asks, “How is all this going to end?” The jury is still out, but when Shaw is posing the question, and Benson staging the process, it’s very well worth sitting in.

‘Heartbreak House’

Devon Raymond: Ellie Dunn

Patricia Fraser: Nurse Guinness

Paxton Whitehead: Captain Shotover

Kandis Chappell: Lady Utterword

Frances Conroy: Hesione Hushabye

John Vickery: Hector Hushabye

Hal Landon Jr.: Mazzini Dunn

Richard Doyle: Boss Mangan

Dan Kern: Randall

Burglar: Jeffrey Allan Chandler

Director Martin Benson. Playwright George Bernard Shaw. Sets John Iacovelli. Lights Paulie Jenkins. Costumes Shigeru Yaji. Music and sound Michael Roth. Production Manager Edward Lapine. Stage manager Bonnie Lorenger. Assistant stage manager Julie Haber.