`HEARTBREAK' ... IN THE '90S.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Theater Critic

Many centuries before cigars became an Oval Office aphrodisiac, playwrights were pondering the tricky relationship between sexual morality and national destiny.

This spring, Glendale's A Noise Within tackles that theme, among others, with its fine production of George Bernard Shaw's ``Heartbreak House.'' Co-directed by Julia Rodriguez Elliott and husband Geoff Elliott, who also performs here, Shaw's prescient 1920 comedy has been thoughtfully paired with ``What the Butler Saw,'' Joe Orton's satire of sexual mores in fad-crazy Swinging London, and ``Oedipus the King,'' Sophocles' tragedy of sexual mores in plague-stricken, not-so-swinging Thebes.

Like those other two milieus, the post-Great War Britain of ``Heartbreak House'' is a ship cut loose from its spiritual moorings, listing aimlessly between an apocalyptic past and an overcast future.

Not that you'd know it, at first, from the seemingly blithe self-absorption of Hesione Hushabye and her willfully eccentric relatives. A flirty bohemian beauty, Mrs. Hushabye (Deborah Strang) sets the dizzying intellectual and romantic pace at the Sussex country home of her father, Capt. Shotover (Mitchell Edmonds), a gruff old cynic with a Sophoclean understanding of human nature.

Under the same unruly roof are Hesione's jaunty clotheshorse of a husband, Hector (Elliott), her progressively minded sister Ariadne (Anna C. Miller), just back from a long overseas trip, and a servant (Sandra Ellis Lafferty) whose bizarre epiphanies occasionally outshine those of her masters.

The play's mechanical Act 1 functions mainly to set up the action and introduce a typical Shavian menagerie of opinionated characters. Chief among them are the precocious Ellie Dunn (Ann Marie Lee) and Boss Mangan (Apollo Dukakis), the amoral captain of industry Ellie plans to marry for money - if a prior flirtation with Hector doesn't get in her way.

With the stage thus set for highbrow farce, the momentum kicks in, and the Elliotts allow their strong ensemble a degree of comic elbow room that's rare in the buttoned-down Shavian world. Lines are delivered with a crisply absurdist edge, confrontations staged with an extra jolt of energy, and Anna Wyckoff's stylish costumes get flounced and fluttered with maximum bemused indignation.

The Elliotts' daring and refreshing approach lets the play's frank, disarming intelligence breathe freely, without descending into door-slamming hyperbole - although Strang is permitted to go slightly over the top with her wild-eyed glances and feline leaps onto the furniture. When Ellie complains that Hesione is ``such a sphinx, I never know what you're thinking,'' the description doesn't quite match the self-dramatizing sex kitten we've been watching.

Like Oscar Wilde before him, Shaw filtered big ideas through the parlor-comedy conventions of his time. ``Heartbreak House'' twits capitalism, hypnotism, Freudian psychoanalysis and, of course, socialism in the person of a high-minded burglar seeking salvation (James Karr). There's a terrific sparring match between Strang and Lee, whose impassioned Ellie keeps us wondering whether she's an icy predator or an idealistic love slave - sound familiar, Ms. Lewinsky? - and one beautifully poetic interlude between Ellie and Edmonds' Capt. Shotover, who's unable, finally, to fully conceal his own shattered soul.

``When your heart is broken and your boats are burned ... it is the beginning of happiness,'' Ellie croons, resting her head on the old seaman's shoulder. At century's end, the echo of that wishful prophesy rings sweetly through this fine production.

THE FACTS

What: ``Heartbreak House.''

Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale.

When: In repertory through May 16.

Tickets: $24 to $28. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Ann Marie Lee and Mitchell Edmonds in ``Heartbreak House,'' at A Noise Within.