Director Discovers Joy in Shaw’s ‘Heartbreak’

Caprice Spencer Rothe had a hand--actually two long, slender ones--in the making of one of history’s most popular and enchanting mass-entertainments, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.”

Now she is grappling with one of the 20th century’s most celebrated and complex plays, “Heartbreak House” by George Bernard Shaw. Rothe (pronounced row-thee) is directing the 80-year-old work’s current revival at the Vanguard Theatre in Fullerton.

In “E.T.,” Rothe, a specialist in mime, movement and acting with masks, served as the winsome little space man’s arms and hands. She was on the set to coach the creature’s operators in making its actions seem lifelike, and it was deemed that Rothe’s thin wrists and long fingers, wrapped in latex, would be perfectly suited to doing E.T.’s handiwork. Lying on her back beneath the otherwise mechanical alien, she became his arms and hands.

Rothe was raised to regard Shaw as alien too.

“I grew up hearing that this man was a beast and a monster,” she recalled recently over an iced drink at a cafe near her home in Long Beach. Her father, scenic designer Gus Rothe, was an opinionated, sometimes blustery man who didn’t like Shaw’s socialist views, or that, as he saw it, Shaw’s plays were usurping program slots that should have gone to American writers.

“Quite honestly, I was intimidated by Shaw for many years,” Rothe said.

Before her current assignment, Rothe had seen a handful of Shaw’s plays, including a 1991 staging of “Heartbreak House” at South Coast Repertory. This is her first attempt at directing a play by the Irish-born icon.

In “Heartbreak House,” written during World War I and first performed in 1920, Shaw planted a cross section of British society in one idiosyncratic place: a home whose retired sea captain/owner designed it to look like a ship. The multilayered work is satisfyingly comic as its cast of eccentrics play games with each other--especially games that lead to romantic heartbreak.

But after the curtain falls, the overall impact, as Shaw intended it, is deeply disturbing. His characters’ witty byplay dramatized a society where the cultured and powerful had become so distracted by their small, flighty concerns of greed, daydreaming and sexual pursuit that they ignored the social and geopolitical lighted fuses that would erupt in a world war.

In the final scene--the only intimation that the play is set during wartime--bombs drop around Heartbreak House, dealing death. Most of its denizens become giddy with excitement and remain oblivious to the horror.

“But what a glorious experience! I hope they’ll come again tomorrow night,” crows Hesione Hushabye, mistress of Heartbreak House and orchestrator of its social games.

“Oh, I hope so,” says Ellie Dunn, a young visitor who, according to Shaw’s stage instructions, is “radiant at the prospect.” Comedy, which traditionally celebrates the continuing cycle of life, has in “Heartbreak House” given birth to a death wish among jaded people seeking any release from their boredom and aimlessness.

Coming from a specialty in the wordless arts of mime and movement, it would seem quite a stretch for Rothe to take on a masterwork by Shaw, a verbal gymnast whose appeal lies in the wit of his dialogue and the force of his social and political commentary.

Rothe read the play five times as she tried to decide whether to take on the directing assignment. She had worked with the Vanguard several times since 1993 in her capacity as a movement and mime coach. She wanted a shot at directing there, especially since she had worked with and admired some of the ensemble members who were cast in key roles in “Heartbreak House.”

She could see the humor in the play, but as she read and read again, it didn’t come alive for her.

“I thought, ‘How am I going to get these [characters] to be charming? I got mired in [Shaw being] ‘the talkiest playwright’ and how was I going to move [the action] along?”

Finally, she summoned an actor friend, David Fruechting, and they read “Heartbreak House” out loud. “I was laughing all the way through it,” Rothe recalled. She quickly applied for the gig.

Shaw may have been artist non-grata when Rothe was growing up in the San Fernando Valley, but she did get a strong early grounding in Shakespeare. She earned a degree in graphic design from UCLA and became a scenic artist like her father, who was on staff at NBC television. Along with a wariness of Shaw, her dad imparted an appreciation of physical comedy as practiced by Art Carney, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton and Laurel and Hardy.

Her childhood passion had been ballet, and she returned to it after college. After a dance performance, somebody commented that her style was just like mime. “I said, ‘What’s that?’ ”

With her curiosity piqued she walked into a mime school near her home in Hollywood. That led to a 25-year career as a professional mime and clown, including a one-woman show that she performed annually through the 1980s and early ‘90s at the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach.

Rothe also taught mime to kids at South Coast Repertory’s Young Conservatory for about 15 years, then branched into directing at area theaters. Since 1998 she has earned her living as a freelancer in computer graphics while continuing to direct and teach mime, movement and clowning on the side.

Besides “E.T.,” Rothe’s Hollywood credits, all from the early 1980s, include coaching the aliens’ movements in “Cocoon,” appearing as the detached head of a mannequin in “Twilight Zone--The Movie,” and playing a giant cockroach in a direct-to-video obscurity called “Flicks.”

Unlikely as it may seem, Rothe thinks her understanding of mime and masked performance prepared her to take on “Heartbreak House.”

“It’s all about posing, putting up masks to keep the power you think you have,” she said. “The characters are constantly moving and talking to keep their masks up, but when the mask slips, the truth is revealed.”

She is paying special attention to pace and timing. She wants the actors to “go as fast as they can” to evoke the frenzied game-playing, then offset it with moments of stillness when the figurative masks come down.

Along with some judicious cuts, the fast pace will help keep the production to about 2 hours and 45 minutes, counting intermission, according to Wade Williamson, artistic director at the Vanguard. An uncut “Heartbreak House” can run well past 3 hours, Rothe said.

During the 1920s, she said, Shaw revoked the performing rights from a producer who wanted to cut the play. “He said he’d already cut it to the bone. I cut it to the marrow.”

Rothe thinks “Heartbreak House” retains its cutting force as social commentary. To her, it reflects any society in which the custodians of art and culture have retreated from their obligation to propel a humanistic concern into the debate and conduct of public affairs. She considered setting the Vanguard production in 1980s America under Ronald Reagan, and thinks it could be updated easily to today’s world of dot.com wealth. She also thought of locating the action in an insane asylum where “the inmates are running the ship.”

Rothe is not afraid of radically transforming a classic--for a staging of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” in Long Beach she clad the characters in animal masks as visual clues to their natures.

Ultimately, Rothe decided to keep “Heartbreak House” in its original setting in England, circa 1914.

These days, the hands that helped animate E.T. are stained with yellow, brown and red. Rothe, carrying on her father’s craft as set designer, is helping to paint the scenery. Gus Rothe died in 1984. But his daughter thinks the theater pro in him would have helped him understand, if not exactly approve, her decision to throw in with the despised G.B.S.

“He would be glad I was getting work,” she said.

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“Heartbreak House,” by George Bernard Shaw, at the Vanguard Theatre, 699-A S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends Aug. 12. $10-$15. (714) 526-8007.