|
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.
|
