By Harry Haun
13 Oct 2006

"Comedy Tonight!—can you believe it?" exuded the traditionally sombre Robins, who for refreshing change gets to display some sparkling and highly refined wit. "It's so nice to do this instead of crying for a living—and so much fun, like exercising a whole other muscle." She had to pause and think long and hard to come up with her last comedy, in point of fact. "Oh, gosh. Well, maybe Arms and the Man, another Shaw play, back at New Jersey Shakespeare—I did Raina—but, of course, at the time I didn't know much about Shaw's language and delivery, so I look back and I go, `What the heck did I do?'"

Not only is she funny, she's beautiful being funny—a compliment she quickly passes to the show's costume designer. "Jane Greenwood is a genius. She is my goddess. I worship at her feet. She says, `How about this?' I'm, like, `You pick it, honey. You don't even talk to me. Just put it on me. Make me look good.'" Greenwood did as instructed. I asided to Cuccoli that I hoped Robins got to keep her costumes she looked so smashing in them—"but, then, where could she wear them?" He assured me she would find a way.

I wished the same for Kurtz, who is also flatteringly attired by Greenwood. "Oh, I wish I could keep them, too," she confessed. "I would have worn my second-act dress to opening night if they would have let me." The first-act costume is a rust-red number that goes with her cascading curls ("Other women can snare men in their hair. I can swing a baby on mine," her character crows.) The abundance of fringe on this dress leads to the suspicion it was once drapes, and you start looking for Bill Blass curtain rods.

"It's a juicy role," said Kurtz, who's not timid about putting the character out there. "I never thought I'd get there, but now I feel I know who she is, and I'm just lettin' her fly."

As her husband—the roue-in-residence—Jennings has a high old time of it and takes it at a gallop, buzzing from flower to flower to flower. "I always enjoy being a rascal. There's nothing more fun than being a rascal, I guess." He gleefully embraces the Greenwood get-ups, as he goes—at one point, lunging forth in a Lawrence of Arabia headgear looking exactly like Ben Turpin. When he shucks that, his suave persona returns.

The Paper of Record recently noted that, in any play he's in, he's usually the most stylish person on stage—a compliment that sets his teeth gnashing. "I didn't quite know what to make of that. I guess it was nice. If you have to see something in the paper, I guess it's good to see that. I'm a little skeptical about those things, but other than that, it was nice."

Most of the vocal bombast in the show comes from Camp's camp, wolfing out of the role of Boss Mangan exactly like Sir Donald Wolfit. "I didn't have anybody specifically in mind," he contended—but you decide, America. (It's an excellent performance—and perfect for this play.)

Rabe, who made her Broadway debut only two years ago as the doomed young heroine of Steel Magnolias, betrayed her Bethlehem Steel roots as this young Shavian heroine. "It's overwhelming in the best way," she admitted. "I'd much rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed by a part and sorta think, `OhmyGod, what am I going to do now?' It's a gorgeous role. It's such a privilege to be able to play a part like this. I mean, it's amazing, having just graduated college a couple of years ago to be doing Shaw. It's what you go to school to study. It's Shaw. And then I'm doing it, with these people. And it's very unbelievable. Ellie is so much more than the ingenue. She is so smart and brave, and she is really just trying to survive and sorta figure life out. She goes through so much, taking life as a constant and trying to figure out the best way to get ahead. She has everything against her: she's a poor woman, and she sorta comes out on the other end of things."

John Christopher Jones, who plays Rabe's father, is on familiar footing here and among friends: "I worked with Phil Bosco in The Miser at Circle in the Square Uptown I don't know how many years ago. This is my fourth show with Byron. It's like old home week. Eighteen years ago I worked with Robin Lefevre."

British director Lefevre was the last to arrive at the party, deliberately. "I don't go to first nights, so I had a very good evening," he said. "I went back to the hotel and watched soccer. I never go to openings. Never. It's all theirs. It's their show, and they have to do it."

Lefevre never directed Heartbreak House before, but it always fascinated him. "It's an extraordinary play," he contends. "The wars, the fact that people are deliberately distracted by the powers that be, given other things to think about when they should be concentrating on whether we should be where we are at the moment—that's what Shaw's writing about. The people in this house were so involved with themselves that they didn't see the storm clouds of war approaching until it was too late.

"So the parallels of 1913 to 2006 are appropriate. Nothing changes. Shaw recognized in the early part of the 20th century that forces were afoot to deflect people, to take people's eye off the ball—and none so more than now. From my perspective and my country, many of us were against the war. Many of us marched against the war. All that didn't make a bit of difference to Blair. You look at the glint in the eye of Blair and you see the glint of the zealot, you can bet your life somebody's going to die somewhere. It's unfortunate, and it's a source of great distress to many, many of us that we didn't see it. We were conned. The guy's a snake-oil salesman. I'm nearly 60, and I didn't see it. And I thought I was clued in. I thought I was sophisticated. But I'm not. I'm not. I thought I could spot con men. I didn't spot him, and that's a major source of embarrassment and shame for many of us. That's the sort of the resonance that runs through the play."

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