Trumpeting his skills as a visionary, George Bernard Shaw insisted that he began writing Heartbreak House before World War I broke out. In a work he described as "a fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes," he set out to depict a society behaving foolishly as irreversible upheaval approached. So insistent was Shaw on making his point in a Chekhovian manner (and manor) that he doesn't seem to have cared if what he ranted about in his wittily polemical way added up to a logical, let alone lucid, comedy-drama.

Ultimately, it doesn't. Still, it's spellbinding, and Robin Lefevre's current production for the Roundabout marvelously casts the required magic spell. It's a proud tribute [...]