The House of Blue Leaves
There's a show before the show in playwright John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves; for this Who Wants Cake? production, director Joe Bailey cleverly stashes it in the corner and gives it all the excitement of a preflight safety presentation. Whatever, guy, the atmosphere deadpans, as a flop-sweaty fellow plays piano with his fingers, sings with his mouth, and begs for adulation with every other molecule of his being. Instead, most of the Ringwald's listening audience — quite possibly the entire universe — is rolling its collective eyes at Artie Shaughnessy.
Played by Dave Davies, Artie is a zookeeper by day and a middling songwriter by night. Energized by his new lady love, the headstrong Bunny (Melissa Beckwith), he finally feels ready to take on the entertainment world with a handful of ditties and a dream (oh, and a lifelong tie to the biggest director in the film industry). Artie holds his Hollywood future with Bunny in front of him like a gem, but below the surface there is an undercurrent of feet-dragging, the source of which is Bananas (Lisa Jesswein), Artie's mentally ill wife. Given the play's 1965 setting, her treatment is inherently troubling: Artie force-feeds her pills whenever she emotes more than a groggy stupor, and Bunny talks about her like a piece of furniture even when she's in the room. But the primary strength of this production is in its veering tones; from a paper-thin blossoming infatuation set to music, to Looney Tunes–worthy chase scenes, to a vast sounding board of pathos, Bailey and company shift between and bleed together the disparate parts of a bleakly dark yet shimmering comedy.
The main trio provides a cornerstone of strong complementary characters. Jesswein's sensitive and mournful Bananas feels very real, existing in a different genre altogether, yet forging out a deserved place for herself in this kitchen-sink narrative. Opposite her, Davies oh-so-sweetly plays fleeting moments of connection and regret that hurt all the more when they dissipate. And through it all, Beckwith is a stalwart, bossy cheerleader ready to stand by her man or, better yet, get behind him for a shove in the right direction. Because the awkward love triangle of musical hack, stage mother, and human doorstop isn't enough story for Guare, he sets the action over the backdrop of Pope Paul VI's actual 1965 trip to New York City, the first papal visit to the United States in history. It's like the Beatles for nuns and lepers; in fact, three brides of Christ (Bailey, Joe Plambeck, and Cara Trautman) manage to infiltrate Artie's apartment and riotously heighten the stakes. The excitement is also sufficient to beckon home Bananas and Artie's enlisted son, Ronnie (Vince Kelley), although his return is night-shrouded and his coyly nefarious intentions kept secret from all but the viewer. The final straw comes in the form of loud starlet Corinna Stroller (Anne Faba); given a single comedic premise, Faba nevertheless wins laughs hand over fist. The cast fairly wrings potential out of Michael Reeves's cozy set until a catastrophic event drifts the characters slowly down in a long coda that, again, feels different than everything before it but also perfectly in tune.
In most plays the climax would fall at the height of the action, but here it's the aftermath, marked by the entrance of Billy Einhorn (Jamie Richards). The embodiment of Artie's ticket to the future, Richards oozes compassion as he plays the fixer; somebody had to, because after all, doesn't everything turn out all right in a comedy? Further reveals allow space for Trautman to flesh out her character's darling and agreeably off-putting innocence as new interactions are forged; the near-final moments have a warm winding-down feel of a music box, the universe waiting to right itself.
In an alienating choice, the theater sits bright and ghostly quiet before, during, and after the play — although Plambeck's sound design is no slouch in serving up pre-recorded piano accompaniment and various sound effects. Yet unsettling as the intentional dearth of mood may be, the viewer may be hard-pressed to find any other single theme to suit this Blue Leaves, a production as unafraid to wave to its audience as it is game to pull the rug from beneath it. This isn't a comedy to be taken lightly, but viewers hungry for a challenging piece of theater should be invigorated merely by keeping up with this charming, funny, wicked hodgepodge.
January 21, 2011