House of Blue Leaves

by John Guare

directed by Jeremy Nye

at Leverett House

"No more pills...No more--look at me--I'm a peaceful forest, but I can feel all the animals have gone back into hiding and now I'm very quiet. All the wild animals have gone back into hiding. But once--once let me have an emotion? Let the animals come out?" This plaintive cry is at the heart of the House of Blue Leaves. John Guare does let the animals out in this brilliant early script of his, and director Jeremy Nye gives them strategically free rein in the superb production mounted at Leverett House.

House of Blue Leaves is, in fact, a veritable zoo. Flamboyant Bunny Flingus wants nothing more than to go to Hollywood, where, she imagines, "they're out there frigging and frugging and swinging and eating and dancing." It is the absence of exactly this vigor that Bunny notices in would-be songwriter Artie Shaughnessy: "no man takes a job feeding animals in the Central Park Zoo unless he's afraid to deal with humans."

There's Bananas Shaughnessy, Artie's sick wife, who likes to play dog: "I like being animals. You know why? I never heard of a famous animals. Oh, a couple of Lassies--an occasional Trigger--but, by and large, animals weren't meant to be famous." Various nuns, Hollywood types, the son of the Shaughnessys and a man with a straitjacket add to the general melee.

But the dramatic tension hinges on the relations between Bunny, Artie and Bananas. Precisely because of the unconventionality of the drama, it is a relief that Nye, on the whole, gives a faithful interpretation: Nye's delicate orchestration of events matches Guare's script smoothly, carefully steering clear of both melodrama and slapstick humor.

There are some divergences: Nell Benjamin's Bunny Flingus seems substantially younger than the early 40s she is expected to be; and Faith Salie's Bananas seems lost rather than sad. It's hard to believe she stays in her room crying "all the time" as Artie says, or, for that matter, "for the last six months," as the stage directions stipulate.

But these changes neither distract nor detract: Benjamin and Salie are the clear talents of this show, and they deserve some room to experiment. Benjamin plays Bunny with obvious relish, and her lines are delivered smartly, sharply: "Mr. Einhorn, if it took all this to get you here, I kiss the calendar for today. Grief puts erasers in my ears. My world is kept a beautiful place. Artie...I feel a song coming on." Salie is a riveting Bananas; her face visibly pained when forced to swallow pills, her voice full of fear when she describes shock treatments.

Blake Lawit's Artie Shaughnessy is convincing when being self-involved and petty; he is less convincing when there are momentary possibilities of greater emotional depth. The character and his action at the end of the play are only interesting insofar as we actually believe that he is not static, that he at least sometimes agonizes over Bananas, that he once really loved her.

Producers Caitlin Cronin and Kate Gellert and set designer Catherine Zipf have created a set which looks like a messy vintage New York apartment but is still cleanly functional. Costume designer Meg Gleason skillfully outfits Bananas in a soulfully dramatic dress in the last act. Gleason chooses for Bunny Flingus hot pink ski pants that speak volumes about her personality.

It's amazing how funny House of Blue Leaves is, considering its four deaths, a schizophrenic wife, the Vietnam War, a husband who wants to run off to pursue delusions of grandeur. None of this bitter material prevents the funny parts from being really funny. Nor does it seem to depress the audience. As Bunny says, "I haven't seen so many people so excited since the premiere of Cleopatra. It's that big."