The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's sad/funny, tragically hilarious farce, garnered some impressive awards, including best American play of the season, in its 1971 off-Broadway debut. Bunbury Theater's splendid revival of this now-classic work doesn't miss a beat while propelling the audience through a roller-coaster ride that could go off the track at any moment. Guare's plot, he has said, stemmed from a real-life visit by Pope Paul VI to New York in 1965 when the Pontiff's motorcade passed along Queens Boulevard on the way to the United Nations.
Most of the characters Guare creates just gotta see the Pope that day. Zookeeper and would-be songwriter Artie Shaughnessy (Matt Orme), his insane wife Bananas (Carol Tyree Williams), his pushy girlfriend Bunny Flingus (Susan McNeese Lynch), who excitedly trumpets this as the biggest day in Queens since the premier of "Cleopatra," and the other hapless losers who parade through the Shaughnessy apartment are pathetic dreamers mired in a materialistic, celebrity-driven culture that they can't ever comprehend.
Laughter engendered by these characters comes mingled with pain. These are all fools, but they'll never know it. Orme's miserable songwriting efforts are amusingly exhibited. He thinks his boyhood friend Billy, now a big Hollywood director, can put the tunes in films. Girlfriend Bunny, with her cheerleading obtuseness, thinks they're brilliant.
It's only poor, demented Bananas, touchingly portrayed by Williams, who subtly conveys to Artie how bad his tunes are. The scene when she asks him to play "White Christmas" just after he has performed his own song that uses the same melody is a gem; Orme's facial expression at the sudden realization of his plagiarism brings on a rare moment of self-awareness. Mix in Bananas and Artie's AWOL soldier son Ronnie (Mike Slaton), who is planning to blow up the Pope at Yankee Stadium, the deaf starlet girlfriend (Kendall Eckler) of Artie's director friend Billy Einhorn (Richard Neal Williams), and a trio of star-struck nuns (Mary Ann Johnson, Trish Powell, Melanie Kidwell), and the chaos explodes in all directions.
Bunbury's dream cast, under the direction of J. Daniel Herring, skillfully brings out the madness, the poignancy, the black humor, the tragedy, and the humanity in the cartoonish lives of the characters. It's a delicate balancing act and quite an accomplishment.
