For the NY Daily News, Joe Dziemianowicz writes that "The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Heartbreak House" begins with a woman seated on a couch, asleep. She's not the only one I saw catching zzz's during this enervating production that ran aground last night on Broadway."

Clive Barnes for the NY Post gives the show 2 out of 4 stars, and writes that "IT wasn't so much a heartbreak - more like a troublesome case of heartburn. George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House" is one of those classic plays that promises more than it delivers - but rarely has it delivered so little as it did last night at the American Airlines Theatre in an oddly flaccid staging by the Roundabout Theatre Company. Despite a strong cast led by the estimable Swoosie Kurtz and the redoubtable Philip Bosco, the play just lies flat on the stage, as disconsolate as a discarded party favor after the ball is over."

For the Associated Press, Michael Kuchwara writes that "Despite all the wit, an undercurrent of sadness snakes through "Heartbreak House," particularly in the play's elegiac third act. The old order in England is slipping away, a ship of state getting ready to sink. Yet Shaw and an excellent Roundabout production makes this last voyage theatrically buoyant."

Elysa Gardner for USA Today gives the show 3 out of 4 stars and writes that "Yet only a few of the players here manage to summon the poignancy underlying Shaw's dense prose. They include Bill Camp, who as Ellie's suitor finds pathos in a capitalist pig, and John Christopher Jones, who exudes an easy tenderness as Ellie's pure-hearted but economically challenged dad. The ever-reliable Philip Bosco shines in another sympathetic role, that of Hesione and Adriadne's father, Captain Shotover. The cranky patriarch is entrusted with some of Shaw's most pungent and revealing lines, and Bosco serves them with a wry grace that's ideal. It's the one performance in this Heartbreak House that matches the power and elegance of the text. Well, almost."

David Rooney for Variety writes that "Staging Shaw well is never straightforward, and doing right by "Heartbreak House," the playwright's indictment of the complacent leisure class he felt was driving Europe toward its ruin, is especially tricky. The 1917 play starts as a comedy of manners that flirts with farce before lurching into a darker mode of despair cloaked in loopy cynicism. Even thematically, it's hard to pin down, ruminating on marriage and morality, class and respectability, business and politics, self-reliance and providence. So it's a pleasant surprise that director Robin Lefevre and a sparkling ensemble tame the unruly material into a sound, stimulating production."

For AM New York, Matt Windman wries that "'Heartbreak House,' on the other hand, which obviously has a far greater literary importance, unfortunately lacks the very vivacious theatricality that animates a unique experience like 'Hell House.' In spite of its ability to offer fine actors and a challenging script, Roundabout's revival of 'Heartbreak House' never adds up to the sum of its parts, and never achieves the heartbreaking catharsis that its author would have wanted."

Lastly, for the NY Times, Charles Isherwood writes that "As brought to fine, irascible life by Philip Bosco in this rippingly good revival that opened last night at the American Airlines Theater, the captain has a crusty charm that surely cuts across all demographics. The man talks such good sense that you might not notice that a major plank in his platform is blowing up the human race. Shotover aside, the time seems unusually ripe for “Heartbreak House,” perhaps Shaw’s richest and saddest play about the follies of humanity, as rehearsed by the British upper classes in the shivery days before World War I." He goes on to write that "Almost a century after it was written, “Heartbreak House” provides a keen comic rebuke to cynicism, self-indulgence and detachment, those all too easy responses to the bitterness of the world, which is still too cruel after all, and surely as damnable as ever."

Overall a bit of a mixed bag of reviews, but very high marks from the uber-influential New York Times is probably all that the play needs to ensure it's got a healthy run...

Posted on October 12, 2006 - by