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Once upon a time—or at
least on stage and in film—people bantered gaily over cocktails and
dinner, zinging ripostes and rejoinders in a merry roundelay of
repartee.
And then there was
your family. Dinner conversations consisting of what your father ate
for lunch, followed by sullen silence—during which you yearned for
your rightful family. The one living in a large country estate,
somewhere outside London, perhaps, where you and your true siblings
were lords and ladies, with talented friends from the worlds of art
and business whom you entertained on summer weekends. Wealth and
privilege commingling with a streak of bohemianism so as to prevent
priggishness. Oh, where, oh, where? Où sont les neiges d’antan?
Or as Swoosie Kurtz,
playing Hesione Hushabye in the current revival of George Bernard
Shaw’s Heartbreak House, says, “Where are the snows of
yesteryear?” It’s a line that provokes commiserative laughter from
the audience: things just ain’t the same, but still we trundle on.
First performed in 1920, Shaw’s three-act comedy of manners puts the
microscope to a class of individuals whose moral bankruptcy, some
would argue, was at least partially responsible for the Great War.
With its sense of impending loss and the changes wrought by
revolution, Heartbreak House bears more than a passing
resemblance to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and as Shaw’s
eccentric assemblage of characters stumble into each other around
the grounds of Captain Shotover’s rambling ship-shaped estate, they
expound grandiloquently on social theory and sexual conflict. These
are people who love to hear themselves talk – and to hear them do so
is to marvel at the lost art of conversation, discourse, and
dialogue.
If, at times, Shaw’s
characters appear at least somewhat self-obsessed, and particularly
when, with hindsight, it would seem they might perhaps have paid a
bit more attention to the world beyond their lawn – well,
nonetheless, it’s delightful to be in their histrionic company. If
it’s already too late, and the world’s about to blow to bits, then
one might as well spend the final days romping with randy and witty
folks.
The oft-maligned third act finds the characters reclining in the
moonlight as planes roar overhead – and to see Shaw’s British
characters in the twilight of their empire is to see parallels with
American society’s almost-willful blindness to the restless state of
the world beyond its borders. Or as Hesione might say, Plus ça
change, plus c’est la même chose.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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