Matches made for love and money in APT's handsome 'Heartbreak House'

By Lindsay Christians, The Capital Times, August 12, 2018. 

“You will find it far less trouble to let papa have his own way than try to explain,” says Hesione (hess-eye-oh-nee) Hushabye, who would prefer to be given the same kind of allowance herself.

Written by George Bernard Shaw during World War I and published soon after, “Heartbreak House” pitches a young woman, Ellie Dunn, into this odd group of “Bohemians.”

Captain Shotover (Jonathan Smoots with perfect comic timing) imagines his English country house to be a ship and has kept a taste for Caribbean rum. 

The Shotovers look, at first, like a very strange sort of family.

Sisters don’t recognize each other. Love matches proceed unaffected by trivial things like who’s married or engaged to whom. People behave one way to a man’s face, then tear him down as soon as they think he’s not paying attention.

Actually, most families do that, right? Maybe it’s not so strange.

In “Heartbreak House,” running in the Hill Theatre at American Players Theatre through Oct. 5, every member of the Shotover family has an extra helping of the obstinate streak common to toddlers and uncles with conspiracy theories.

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