Shaw’s great parable about the state of Britain is a fine vehicle for yet another of the Haymarket’s all star casts, and once again we find ourselves marvelling at the contemporary tinge of many of Shaw’s aphorisms, even if socialism and has moved a long way since GBS's drawing room variety and many of his statements might find favour with Mrs. Thatcher nowadays. It is a play of much talk and little action but just when it shows signs of developing into a dull drone we are suddenly pulled up short with a luminescent line which reminds us why the best of Shaw’s plays still have an intellectual bite and are likely to continue to do so for another 60 years.

Of all his plays, Heartbreak House is the one of most influenced by another writer, Chekhov, but Shaw puts his doomed and depressed characters onto another plane, with philosophies rather than personalities coming to the fore.  These people are more representational - Ellie Dunn looking for an ideal, her father finding one but failing to make it work, the sisters Ariadne  and Hesione  stuck in their respective ruts of snobbish colonial duty and teasing hedonism,  Boss Mangan a plain spoken capitalist who has discovered that life is simply a matter of having confidence but out of his depth when confronted with people who have never had need of it, Captain Shotover, at 88, the repository of wisdom and experience, but too old to do other than a pass it on a bit at a time.

Rex Harrison, returning to the London theatre after a long absence, gives us a Shotover who is a delightful cross between an old Buddha and an old buffer, and there are two wonderfully clear and crisp performances by Diana Rigg, at her most tantalisingly attractive, and Rosemary Harris, cool and cruel, as his daughters.  Mel Martin's fragile beauty makes that go getting little prig Ellie Dunn more sympathetic than usual, and the director John Dexter, has been blessed with a prime collection of character players, Frank Middlemass funny and quite effective as Mangan, Paxton Whitehead as Hector, Simon Ward as the overgrown baby Randall, Paul Curran eager and shining as Mazzini Dunn, Doris Hare bustling busily as a Nurse Guinness and Charles Rea making a brief mark as a burglar.