I’ve never been sure about Shaw, but we thought we’d give this a try because it was The Almeida and because top flight Shaw productions were few and far between at that time.
Great cast and crew – see Theatricalia entry – including Emma Fielding, Richard Griffiths, Patricia Hodge, Penelope Wilton, Malcolm Sinclair and Peter McEnery, with David Hare in the director’s chair.
Despite all those good people, this one added to my/our sense of interminability, which had already been piqued by Suzanna Andler the previous week, which was soon followed by wall-to-wall coverage of Princess Diana’s tragic demise, which took ceaselessness to new levels.
Anyway, my contemporaneous words on Heartbreak House, speaking for both me and Janie:
Seemed interminable in the second half. Had “moments”, but all too few.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard liked it a lot:
Heartbreak de Jongh Standard 04 Sep 1997, Thu Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Paul Taylor in the Indy also loved it:
Heartbreak Taylor Indy 05 Sep 1997, Fri The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Kirsty Milne in The Sunday Telegraph at least nodded to the idea of Shaw being wordy.
Heartbreak Milne Telegraph 07 Sep 1997, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Like Milne, Michael Billington did a compare and contrast between Shaw and Wesker:
Heartbreak Billington Guardian 06 Sep 1997, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
So maybe it was us, not them. Or maybe Shaw is/was simply too wordy for our modern eyes and ears.
