Hartford Stage

“This house is full of surprises for them that don’t know our ways.”

“An increasingly gripping intellectual drama in which the battering of hearts is merely the pretext for a clash of philosophies.”

Heartbreak House is Shaw’s comic and caustic masterpiece about the venerable Captain Shotover, his daughters, one liberal, the other conservative, and a household full of bickering guests in a home that's like a ship - or a country - charting uncertain waters. When the beautiful but impoverished Ellie Dunn arrives, she gets a lesson in romance, politics, and the art of navigation. Shaw’s most ambitious and prophetic achievement, Heartbreak House is set in England in 1914, but its themes and concerns reach across the twentieth century well into our own age. Other works by Shaw include Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Saint Joan, Major Barbara and Arms and the Man.