I'm disappointed in you, GBS. Your plays are usually awesome. This was utter filth. It was like a mixture of Victorian melodrama and modern teen angst. You must have been in a very bad mood.

1 pint of Amsterdam Blonde2 bottles of Sleeman’s Cream Ale2 gin and tonics3 shots of rye on the rocks1 glass of champagne1 bottle of MooseheadSuch was my alcohol consumption this New Year’s Eve. And yet, as you can plainly see, I remain strangely, depressingly lucid, but with a haunting premonition of a bloated, gassy hangover and a sort of lingering foretaste of a vomitous breakfast in a greasy spoon among the pallid reflections of last night’s beautiful young things, some of them still wearing...

i cannot believe bri-ish “people” enjoy this. i was so bored by it that anyone who enjoyed this is automatically disgusting to me now.

Bernard Shaw's 1919 play, "Heartbreak House," is a bitterly angry black comedy - a satire against a British imperial culture in the first two decades of the 20th century that gave rise to the excesses of the first World War, and which could (and would) do a lot worse if given the chance. Consciously drawing on a healthy and proud tradition of Irish satirists, including Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde, Shaw brings us into a declining English country house, which seems to be run by no one in partic...

The only reason I gave it four stars is that I'm not into plays very much. Still I realize that the book is one of the greatest of its time with loads of genuinely funny dialogs and monologues and effervescent jokes.The action takes place on the eve of World War I. And as it had been previously mentioned "lampoons British society as it blithely sinks towards disaster". Somehow I don't quite agree with that. Even though the story deals with Britain and the British, the whole situation, the relati...

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER: the captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle. she will strike and sink and split. do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of england because you were born in it?lord but i love a good first world war allegory <3

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

This play starts out as a traditional British class comedy, then the twist happen. The twist is that [SPOILER ALERT:] the rest of the book is awful. Just consider the dialogue that ends the first act:CAPTAIN SHOTOVER: What a house! What a daughter!MRS HUSHABYE: What a father!HECTOR: What a husband!MH: What do men want? They have their food, their firesides, their clothes mended, and our love at the end of the day. Why are they not satisfied? Why do they envy us the pain with which we bring them

In Heartbreak House, a handful of well attired, and dishonest, men and striking, not to mention cunning, women, are thrown together in the nautically inspired household of an eccentric old captain.Each person's selfishness slowly comes to the forefront and what we once thought about them at the start is turned on its head. The play is an interesting perusal into the meaningless pursuits in pre-war England.

Interesting. I don't think I quite get it. The first 1/3 of the book is political essays about WWI and other topics. The second 2/3 is a rather dark and odd (tragi-)comedy of manners involving quite a few characters to keep track of. I'm sure I'd benefit from seeing the play performed.

This play is partly a comedy about a crazy family and partly a deeper philosophical reflection about the lack of attention to the needs of the world around us.

Heartbreak House (“HH”) by Bernard Shaw (“GBS”) is a selection on my 2020 Reading Challenge list. {SPOILER ALERT} British critics refer to George Bernard Shaw as Bernard Shaw. My edition of HH is British, but I will use “GBS” to connote Bernard Shaw. As always, my comments have some spoilers. 1. I rated this with 5 stars out of 5. I have devoted little time in my reviews to plays like HH. It is a comedy, and like many comedies, it has historical references unique to its own time. So I did not e...

Heartbreak House was not what I would consider the best of George Bernard Shaw's plays. The Preface, in particular, was difficult to get through, but after a time it began to get interesting. The idea of the play was to write about World War I from a civilian's perspective -- the point of view of one seeing the War as a novelty rather than the tragedy that it truly was. The play takes place over (two? one?) night at a country manor in the shape of a ship, symbolic of a leisurely Europe sailing i...

Felt a but drawn out. The beginning intro written by Shaw was all about people, life, WWI and politics. He was a political activist which shows so much in his writing his adoration, understanding and beliefs which just baffle my simple mind but are interesting to read. This book seemed to drag for me but had some interesting moments and of course the Captain was my favourite character, just quite mental.

The only reason I give it a four-star is because it doesn't have a plot. However it's a very interesting play, not as absorbing as "The Devil's Disciple", but interesting nonetheless. Lady Utterword expresses her preference for a regular house several times, but her expression somehow enhances the allure of the heartbreak house. We probably all want to experience the heartbreak house, at least once in our life time. We probably can also call it the anarchy house where nothing is organized. Meal,...

This is one of my favourite Shaw plays -- a motley crew of English aristos gather and chatter blithely about their lives and loves until the bombs drop. Written just after the First World War, it's rather like Ravel's La Valse put in the form of a comedy of manners. Somehow Absurdist and Chekhovian at the same time, with that wonderful, ringing Shavian wit.

I haven’t read a Shaw play yet (the count is up to three so far) without feeling startled or challenged. It’s exceedingly difficult to describe the effect of the third act on my impression of the whole. There I was, wrestling with themes like material vs. spiritual poverty, hypocrisy, tactical duplicity, heartbreak and disillusionment, resistance vs. complacency, thinking the “drumming in the sky” a symbolic sign of looming thunder – and then the bottom dropped out. All the ingredients constitut...

Part of my reading goals for 2018 is to revisit Shaw. I choose Heartbreak House as my starting point, and was not disappointed.To sum it up ~~ A rich Shavian comedy about human folly and the charming and self-absorbed gentry (which would soon give way to an uncharming and self-absorbed celebrity culture), with nods to Wilde. No one quite does love triangles like Shaw. Looking forward to exploring more of the Shavian wit. "How is this going to end?""It won't end. Life goes on."

A House Party like no other!I was reminded of Graham Greene's rather odd book, "Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party" by this play which is also quite unusual.Written in 1910, it was not published until 1919 and premiered in New York the following year. Modelled on Checkov's "Cherry Orchard", it's a somewhat more bombastic allegory of Edwardian upper crust English society between the dilettante set of Heartbreak House and the country set of Horseback Hall as the 1st World War approaches.In typ...

I was pleasantly surprised to open this play and find the author's Preface which was not entirely about the play itself. Refreshing, really, because those pesky Prefaces and Introductions can contain spoilers which leads to the reader feeling pretty bummed out. But then I read the Goodreads description of the book and was spoiled anyway because whoever wrote it SUCKS.Do not be discouraged by the Preface. I almost was because it took me three nights just to read it which, in the long run, is sill...