"Heartbreak House" is typical Shaw in character, plot and commentary. His heroine is as easy to like as his villian. The main conflict between daughter and father run a symbolic parallel to the father's break with the entire family. Shaw seems to cut to the chase with his chastisement of the Salvation Army to which he deals the final death blow at the very end.

Though it is a comedy it is very dark and cold. The funny moments are "laugh out loud" funny while a cold tone continues to brood underneath. Unlike the other Shaw I have read, the humour never quiet catches and quenches the icy tone of the play. As with most Shaw, the play ends on an "up". But the rather chilly last scene underscores his social comment on society.

For a fan of Shavian comedy, this play is a thrifty buy.

This is a great Italian play. Written by Luigi Pirandello, Nobel prize in Literature in 1934.
Although the play has been written in 1918 it is a deep psychoanalytical play that could have been written today.
It is the story of three people (Mr. Ponza, Ms. Ponza, Ms. Frola) that move to a new town because their previous town has been destroyed by an earthquake.
Town people become suspicious because Ms. Ponza never leaves her home. So they start asking around. Mr. Ponza says: Ms. Ponza never leaves her room of her own volition. She is putting up a scene for the benefit of Ms. Frola, that would go mad if she was to know the truth about Ms. Ponza's identity.
Ms. Frola says that, indeed, Ms. Ponza is not leaving her room of her own volition, but that the scene she is putting up is for the benefit of Mr. Ponza. HE would go mad if he was to know the truth.

Pirandello uses this play to explore the nature of truth (Does the truth exists? Is the truth unique? Can the truth be known?), the nature of identity (what does it mean to say that a person IS Ms. Ponza and not someone else? what does define a person?) and the nature of mental illness (Who is mad? Mr. Ponza? Ms. Frola? or perhaps is it Ms. Ponza? or all three of them? or whom?) and of the suffering it brings.
These are three major themes in Pirandello's work and come back time and again in most of his work.

I read the play in Italian, but I left my copy in Italy, so when I bought this translation for a present I did not resist and re-read it. The translation is decent. I think the translation is actually good, but Pirandello is especially difficult to translate because he uses ambiguous expressions on purpose. The ambiguity sometimes gets lost in the translation when the translator is forced to choose a meaning over another. For example, the original title of the play is "Cosi' e' (se vi pare)" the translation offered here is "Right You Are (If You Think You Are). This is definitely one of the possible meanings in Italian, but there are at least another two meanings "Right you are (If you like to think you are)" and "This is it (Because you like it this way)". All three meanings matter in the play but the translator had to choose one. Unfortunately, this is a recurrent problem.

I would recommend this collection to anyone interested in modern drama. Focus particularly on Henry IV. The play in itself is incredibly bizarre upon the first reading. Upon later readings, however, deeper meanings arise. A worthy read.

After reading these plays, I can understand why Pirandello won the Nobel Prize. All of the plays deal with illusion and reality in ways that contemporary writers still struggle with. Both Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Each in His Own Way play with the idea that the audience willfuly suspends reality in order to watch a play (or a movie for that matter). He plays with the idea that what something appears to be is as important, if not more important, that what it really is. Again, illusion versus reality. Although all of the plays were interesting,and entertaining, the two standouts were "Six Characters...," and "It is So! (If You Think So)." The former deals with an acting troupe that is approached by six characters who have been conceived by a writer, but not fully realized. The Characters attempt to get the manager of the troupe to write their script, and thus give them artistic life. "It is So..." deals with the nature of how we know what we know, and how we decide what to believe in terms of what is real and what is not.

The only problem with this collection of plays (and the only reason that I didn't give it five stars) is that in the introduction to "Six Characters..." the editor discusses "Six Characters in Search of an Author," "Each in His own Way," and "tonight We Improvise," as a trilogy. He takes the time to discuss the relationship between these plays, and yet "Tonight We Improvise" is omitted from the collection. Thus, we are left with only the first two plays of the trilogy. What makes it worse is that they are both excellent plays (making me wish I didn't have to scrounge up another book to get the third). Other than that, this is an outstanding collection. Eric Bentley (the editor) writes an informative introduction to Pirandello, and adds Pirandello's own thoughts on "Six Characters...," as well as biographical information on the playwrite, in the appendix. I would recomend this for people who are, or aren't familiar with the work of Luigi Pirandello. It's definitely worth the read.