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NEW YORK -- Anyone who thinks that George Bernard Shaw harbored a soft spot for the set he sends up in Heartbreak House need only refer to its preface.
The title, Shaw wrote in 1919, "is not merely the name of the play" he first conceived in the lead-up to World War I. "It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war." Chekhov had already tossed off a few studies of this metaphorical dwelling, Shaw noted, as had another Russian: "Tolstoy did not waste any sympathy on it. It was to him the house in which Europe was stifling its soul."
I could continue quoting Shaw, but he would be a tough act to follow. Suffice to say that House is, beneath its urbane surface, a dark, sobering piece of business. The trick in staging it is to mine both the breezy wit and the sense of foreboding that increasingly envelops Shaw's privileged, petty characters.
In the Roundabout Theatre Company's new revival (*** out of four) at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre, that task falls to a cast of accomplished pros. Under Robin LeFevre's sturdy, reverent direction, the actors certainly capture the cerebral tang of Shaw's dialogue.
Swoosie Kurtz brings a wry swagger to the role of Hesione Hushabye, an aging heartbreaker holding court at her father's swank home in the English countryside. Laila Robbins is suitably stuffy as her similarly glamorous, flirtatious sister, Lady Adriadne Utterword, exiled years ago after marrying, in Dad's words, a "numskull" (albeit a titled one).
Byron Jennings puts a droll spin on Hesione's own dashing but vapid husband, whose obvious affection for his wife doesn't preclude lustful thoughts about Adriadne or another, younger guest, Ellie Dunn. Lily Rabe, the daughter of Jill Clayburgh and David Rabe, proves crisply fetching as this ingenue, one of Heartbreak's more appealing inhabitants, who is being courted by her father's decidedly unappealing friend.
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.
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