Overview

'Few actors have Jacobi's ability to cut to the emotional core'
The Guardian

On the brink of World War I, pragmatic Ellie Dunn, her father and her fiancé are invited to a house party at the home of eccentric Captain Shotover by his daughter Hesione Hushabye. The family is soon divided by Ellie’s decision to marry for money, not love.

As their hearts and minds become inseparably tangled in Ellie’s dilemma, Bernard Shaw, master of wit and social commentary, brilliantly debates money and morality, idealism and realism, and with uncanny prescience and comic insight chronicles a society teetering on the threshold of enormous change.

Bernard Shaw’s plays include Pygmalion, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, You Never Can Tell, Man and Superman and Major Barbara.

Derek Jacobi plays Captain Shotover. Theatre and film includes King Lear, Twelfth Night, My Week with Marilyn, The King’s Speech and Gosford Park. Numerous credits at Chichester include Uncle Vanya, Playing the Wife, Hadrian VII, The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Saint Joan.

Emma Fielding plays Hesione Hushabye. Theatre credits include The King’s Speech, Private Lives, Look Back in Anger and Arcadia. Television includes Cranford and Kidnap and Ransom. Film includes Twenty8K and Fast Girls.

Ronald Pickup plays Mazzini Dunn. Theatre credits include Waiting for Godot, Uncle Vanya and Long Day's Journey Into Night. Television and film include Lark Rise to Candleford, Fortunes of War and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Richard Clifford directed Playing the Wife for Chichester in 1995; other credits include directing The School for Scandal and The Game of Love and Chance, and All’s Well That Ends Well (Folger Shakespeare Theatre, Washington DC).

Supported by the Heartbreak House Commissioning Circle.

Heartbreak House  is sponsored by

Festival 2012

Thomas Eggar

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