by Adrianne Call

The Blunders of Boobies: Shaw’s Heartbreak House
Through April 11 at the Washington Stage Guild
924 G. Street NW, Washington, D.C.

     D.C. is an artistically conservative town, but there’s nothing conservative about theatre ticket prices here. Still, I hoped I couldn't go terribly wrong shelling out forty-four dollars on a performance of Heartbreak House by a company that specializes in George Bernard Shaw. The venue was Historic Carroll Hall (that's the way the ticket sellers say it), home of the Washington Stage Guild, a group generally considered on a par qualitatively with other "second tier" theatre companies in D.C. (These are artistically recognized, but smaller and less well funded than "first-tier" companies like Washington Shakespeare Company, Kennedy Center, and others). Many of the second-tier groups (Woolly Mammoth, Studio Theater, The Source Theatre) seem locked in an outworn avantiste pose. But the Guild, a small Equity house now in its thirteenth season, has a very different raison d'etre: it produces entire seasons of Shaw, along with some Chekhov, Wilde, and the occasional original script crafted in "the style of."

     WSG had, in fact, staged Heartbreak House (at The Source, originally) as its very first, but unofficial, production. Its director then, as now, was John MacDonald. But his wasn't the only return engagement: Lynn Steinmetz (then cast as Ellie Dunn, now Hesione Hushabye), William Hamlin (then Hector Hushabye, now Captain Shotover), and Laura Giannarelli (then Lady Utterworth and now Lady Utterworth!) were enjoying a reunion as well. At least, one hopes they were enjoying it. The audience certainly wasn't.

     All appearances indicate MacDonald simply didn't bother to direct the play. Seemingly content to use the same mixed bag of actors he's been working with for thirteen years, MacDonald evidently thought Shaw's words would stand alone. They well might have, back in the war-weary, early 1920s, when Heartbreak House premiered. But even then, the playwright at least kept his audience’s experiences in mind. Holding back the publication of his anti-war piece until WWI’s end, Shaw explained, "When men are heroically dying for their country it is not the time to shew their lovers and wives and fathers and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists...." "Truth telling," he observed, "is not compatible with the defense of the realm."

     Most American audiences today haven’t experienced anything like what they had just finished enduring when Heartbreak House was first staged. So one would expect that a play such as this one, premised on very specific cultural or historical events, would be given some kind of narrative setting; but there was no trace of a setting here. Some small attention could have been paid to the milieu of wealthy, cultured, pre-WWI European leisure society that establishes the work’s context. Ignoring that world and its imminent collapse—paying short shrift to the smell of decay, the eroding veneer of civility that should flavor the script—leaves only the Shavian verbiage and an occasional slapstick moment to sustain a three-hour running time. Depending on this to hold an audience in 1999 is, to put it mildly, ill advised—especially since Shaw himself was reportedly unaware of his play’s comedic aspects. "[T]his is one of the most depressing evenings I have spent in the theatre," he lamented on hearing the mirthful reaction of an audience to a 1923 production. "I imagined I had written a.... semi-tragic play... [F]rom your empty-headed laughter, I appear to have written a bedroom farce."

     Had Shaw, in fact, written a farce, I might have been slower to conclude that several of the principals in this production were woefully miscast. But in a script that refers repeatedly to the beauty and charisma of Lady Utterworth, it's simply too distracting that Laura Giannarelli is a portly woman of no particular distinction. Worse, Shaw's mildly dated speech patterns sounded as awkward in her mouth as one imagines a recitation of Beowulf might sound coming out of Dan Quayle. By the time Giannarelli had got done butchering the exquisite second-act scene in which Lady Utterworth destroys her young brother-in-law, Randall (it's one of the most outstanding examples of verbal sadism in modern literature), the audience must have been hoping that someone, anyone, would come along and gag her with a sock.

      Bill Largess was similarly off-putting as the devastatingly handsome Hector Hushabye. Although ably played, one couldn't help noticing handsome Hector's pear-shaped figure, receding hairline, and rapidly blinking eyes. In an equally bizarre twist on the concept of appropriate casting, Scott Sophos played The Burglar, ostensibly a peer of elderly Captain Shotover, the play's brilliant and tragic Lear figure. But Sophos appeared to be only about thirty years old. His sole concession to his character was a horrid application of gray stubble that shone blue under the lights.

     Lynn Steinmetz fared better as the early twentieth-century free spirit, Hesione. (Well enough, in fact, that I wondered how she’d done in WSG's initial production as the younger Ellie Dunn). Attractive but not glamorous, Steinmetz is actress enough to pull off with panache Hesione’s silly bohemian wardrobe. As one of the few cast members who in some slight way actually resembled the character she portrayed, she was a standout. Likewise John Dow—who, as Boss Mangan, was superb (the man can apparently sweat copiously on cue)—and William Hamlin, a well-known radio personality in D.C., who played Captain Shotover. Unfortunately, Hamlin's Shotover, although physically interesting and vocally strong, was hampered in his most important scenes by (again) MacDonald's conspicuous lack of direction and failure to establish context. Without the background drumbeats of impending armed conflict, the good Captain's vital anti-war speeches played more like an onset of senility than prescience.

     Hamlin fared worst in his scenes with the Ellie Dunn character—and poor Ellie Dunn! More to the point, poor Tricia McCauley who, as the young woman about to sell herself to an unscrupulous capitalist, was among all the cast members the one most shamefully betrayed by MacDonald's laziness. An attractive young actress who has done outstanding work for some of the smaller houses in town, she was completely lost in this production. Her appalling British accent was scarcely noticeable after a few moments into the first act, but only because she spent the rest of it making the most extravagant faces I have ever seen outside of silent movies. UP! with the eyebrows—she's surprised, see? FLAP! FLAP! FLAP! went the lower lip—she's speechless, see? ("Goodness," a woman in front of me remarked to her date, "I was about to stick a spoon in that poor girl's mouth.") Thankfully, after Ellie's motives were revealed as being less than pure, McCauley was allowed to calm down, and the second and third acts were less offensive—although the actress’s real-life habit of widely opening and then slamming shut her eyelids (a case of ill-fitting contact lenses?) continued to add unintended dimensions to her character.

     My companion and I were positively relieved when, over three hours after the curtain rose on Heartbreak House, we stepped out of our heartbreaking boredom and into a cold, drizzling rain. Standing to one side of the stairs leading into Historic Carroll Hall were two gentlemen who evidently worked for the theatre. They were discussing the depletion of the audience, which by play's end had dwindled to about half those seated when it began. "What can you do?" one shrugged. "We warned them when they went in, it's a long play."

     "Not as long as Man and Superman," the other laughed, smugly.

     Well, boys, thanks for the warning. We were just pining for another opportunity to part with $44 in exchange for the privilege of sitting through a massacre of one of this century's better playwrights. What can you do—other than a better job next time?

     Adrianne Call is a Washington-based writer and editor who is very active in the D.C. theatre community. She has written plays that have been performed all along the Eastern seaboard from NYC to Miami FL, and is currently working on a book of children's poetry.