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Heartbreak House

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Captain Shotover’s ship-like household is home to a collection of reomantic individuals who deride business and politics but remain self absorbed as the world threatens to fall apart around them.

Credits

Creative team

By

George Bernard Shaw

Directed by

David Wheeler

Directed by

David Wheeler

On Broadway, he directed Richard III with Al Pacino, and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, for which Mr. Pacino won the Tony Award for Best Actor. Regional theatres include the Guthrie Theatre, Alley Theatre, Paper Mill Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Arizona Theatre Company, Pittsburgh Playhouse, and the Charles de Rochefort Theatre in Paris, where he directed the French premiere of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story.

As the artistic director of the Theatre Company of Boston (TCB) from 1963 to 75, Mr. Wheeler directed over eighty productions.  Among these were ten by Pinter, seven by Brecht, five by Albee, nine by Beckett, two by O'Neill, and numerous works by new writers such as Ed Bullins, Jeffrey Bush, John Hawkes, Adrienne Kennedy, and Sam Shepard.  Through these productions and others, he helped to launch the careers of then-unknown actors including Paul Benedict, Larry Bryggman, John Cazale, Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner, Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall, Hector Elizondo, Spalding Gray, Paul Guilfoyle, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Ralph Waite, and James Woods. His film The Local Stigmatic (with Mr. Pacino)—adapted from the play by Heathcote Williams—was presented at the Montreal Film Festival and screened at the Whitney Museum and the MOMA. It will be released in 2006.

Mr. Wheeler's honors include the Elliot Norton Award for his work on Misalliance, the St. Botolph Club Foundation's Award for Distinction in the Performing Arts, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Award. He has taught and directed at Harvard University, Boston University, MIT, Brandeis, Barnard, Colorado College, and Circle-in-the-Square. He has directed student productions at U.N.C. Chapel Hill, U.C. Irvine and Long Beach, and Évora, Portugal. After receiving his masters at Harvard, Mr. Wheeler trained with José Quintero in New York during the great "O'Neill years" of the 1950's.

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Set design by

Derek McLane

Set design by

Derek McLane

Derek McLane has designed over a dozen sets for the A.R.T., including Waiting for Godot, What the Butler Saw, The Caretaker, Heartbreak House, Hedda Gabler, Misalliance, The Homecoming, Twelfth Night, and The Father. He has collaborated with directors including Edward Albee, Gregory Boyd, Robert Brustein, Michael Engler, Michael Kahn, Mark Lamos, Nicholas Muni, Charlie Newell, Lisa Peterson, Jackson Phippin, Peter Sellars, Andrei Serban, Stephen Wadsworth, David Wheeler, and Stan Wojewodski. In New York he has designed for The Acting Company, Playwrights Horizons, LaMama/ETC, and the Juilliard School. Outside New York he has designed for Scottish Opera in Glasgow, The Taganka in Moscow, Canadian Opera, Alley Theatre, Arena Stage, Center Stage, the Guthrie Theater, Hartford Stage, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., and Yale Repertory Theatre.

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Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Catherine Zuber has created the costumes for Richard II, The Doctor's Dilemma, and over forty other A.R.T. productions including Three Farces and a Funeral, Antigone, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, Phaedra, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Imaginary Invalid, The Taming of the Shrew, Peter Pan and Wendy, The Bacchae, Man and Superman, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Woyzeck, The Wild Duck, The Naked Eye, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tartuffe, Ubu Rock, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Shlemiel the First, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, A Touch of the Poet, What the Butler Saw, The Cherry Orchard, and Orphée. Ms. Zuber's credits include work at Lincoln Center, The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Goodman Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, among others. Her Broadway credits include The Triumph of Love (Connecticut Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk nomination), Ivanov (Drama Desk nomination), The Sound of Music, Twelfth Night, The Red Shoes, London Assurance, The Rose Tattoo, and Philadelphia Here I Come. Ms. Zuber was the recipient of the 1997 Obie Award for sustained achievement in design. She is the costume designer for La Fête des Vignerons de 1999, the massive Festival of the Winegrowers in Vevey, Switzerland.

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Lighting design by

Howell Binkley

Lighting design by

Howell Binkley

Howell Binkley's lighting designs for Hartford Stage in addition to The Glass Menagerie include Camino Real and The Clearing, and his designs for the American Repertory Theater include Sweet Table at the Richelieu, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Gillette, Quartet, The Miser, Twelfth Night, Heartbreak House, and The Cherry Orchard. On Broadway his work has appered in The Full Monty; Gore Vidal's The Best Man; Minnelli on Minnelli; Parade; Kiss of the Spiderwoman; My Thing of Love; Sacrilege; Taking Sides; and High Society. Off-Broadway work and tours include Never the Sinner; Whistle Down the Wind; Jekyll and Hyde; and Civil War. He has worked at numerous regional theaters, including the Alley Theatre; McCarter Theatre; La Jolla Playhouse; Shakespeare Theatre; New York Shakespeare Festival; City Center Encores Productions; and Cirque Ingeniux for Networks. His work in dance and opera includes American Ballet Theater; National Ballet of Canada; Paris Opera Ballet; Hubbard Street Dance; Parsons Dance Company (co-founder); Peter Pucci Plus; Joffrey Ballet Billboards; Metropolitan Opera; and Dallas Opera.

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Sound design by

Maribeth Back

Cast

Shotover

Jeremy Geidt

Shotover

Jeremy Geidt

A.R.T. Senior Actor, founding member of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the A.R.T. Yale: more than 40 productions (including The Seagull). A.R.T.: 100 productions including The Seagull (three turns as Sorin), Julius Caesar, Three Sisters, The Onion Cellar, Major Barbara (Undershaft), Heartbreak House (Shotover), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Quince four times, Snug once), Henry IV (Falstaff), Twelfth Night (Toby Belch), The Caretaker (Davies), The Homecoming (Max), Loot (Truscott), Man and Superman (Mendoza/Devil), Waiting for Godot (Vladimir), The Threepenny Opera (Peacham/Petey), Ivanov (Lebedev), Three Sisters (Chebutkin), Buried Child (Dodge), The Cherry Orchard (Gaev) and The King Stag (Pantelone). Teaches at Harvard College, Harvard’s Summer and Extension Schools and at the A.R.T/MXAT Institute. Trained at the Old Vic Theatre School and subsequently taught there. Acted at the Old Vic, Young Vic, The Royal Court, in the West End, in films and television and has been hosting his own show “The Caravan” for the BBC for five years. Came to the U.S. with the satirical revue The Establishment and acted on and off Broadway, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and at the Lincoln Center Festival. Lectured on Shakespeare in India and the Netherlands Theatre School. Received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Boston Actor and the Jason Robards Award for Dedication to the Theatre.

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Nurse Guinness

Patti Allison

Nurse Guinness

Patti Allison

Ellie Dunn

Tracy Sallows

Ellie Dunn

Tracy Sallows

Lady Utterword

Candy Buckley

Lady Utterword

Candy Buckley

Hesione Hushabye

Margaret Gibson

Hesione Hushabye

Margaret Gibson

Mazzini Dunn

Gustave Johnson

Mazzini Dunn

Gustave Johnson

Hector Hushabye

Royal Miller

Hector Hushabye

Royal Miller

Boss Mangan

Jack Willis

Boss Mangan

Jack Willis

Jack Willis appeared as Hector Malone Sr. in Man and Superman, Carl in The Old Neighborhood, The Drum Major in Woyzeck, Bruto in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Relling in The Wild Duck in the American Repertory Theater's 1996-97 season. Previously, he appeared as Tilden in Buried Child, Caliban in The Tempest, the husband in The Accident, Man in Hot 'n' Throbbing, Jamie Cregan in A Touch of the Poet, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Sir Walter Blunt in Henry IV, Part 1 and Lord Hastings in Part 2, Boss Mangan in Heartbreak House, Panin in Black Snow, Uyttersprot in Dream of the Red Spider, Aston in The Caretaker, Sal in Those the River Keeps, and Banquo in Macbeth. As a member of the resident company at the Dallas Theatre Center, his roles included Willie Stark in All the King's Men, Caliban in The Tempest, and Jack Henry Abbott in In the Belly of the Beast. He has also appeared at the Alliance Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Yale Repertory Theatre, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Teatro de Dallas, the San Antonio and Dallas Shakespeare Festivals, and Cincinnati Playhouse.  Mr. Willis is also a founding member of Aruba Repertory. Television and film credits include Dallas, All My Children, Love Hurts, Problem Child, and I Come in Peace.

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Randall Utterword

Christian Baskous

Randall Utterword

Christian Baskous

The Burglar

William Young

The Burglar

William Young