Palm Beach Dramaworks to Stage John Guare’s Surreal Comedy, ‘The House of Blue Leaves’

It is a testimony to the importance and endurance of John Guare as a major American playwright that this Obie Award-winning play, The House of Blue Leaves, was written in the late 1960s and that his most recent play, Nantucket Sleigh Ride, is currently running Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater.  In between those years he’s written many award winning plays, a musical, and screenplays.  Guare received the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award and the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  In effect, Palm Beach Dramaworks concludes its 2018/2019 season with an emphatic exclamation point, The House of Blue Leaves opening on May 17 and continuing through June 2^nd.

The action takes place in October 1965 during the first visit by a reigning Pope to the United States. Millions are lining up along his parade route from Queens to New York City to greet him.  Among the throngs will be zookeeper Artie Shaughnessy, a wannabe Hollywood songwriter with big dreams and no discernible talent, in the hope that a papal blessing will whisk him away from Queens, leaving his mentally ill wife, Bananas, behind and into a new life in Los Angeles with his girlfriend, Bunny Flingus.

With the Vietnam War constantly in the background, and the hilarity of virtually every character vying to view the Pope, or receiving a blessing from the Pope or maneuvering for a brief moment of fame, The House of Blue Leaves is a black comedy, with farce and reality in stark, sudden juxtaposition.  Guare, who also wrote the entertainingly bad songs “composed” by Artie, has said that The House of Blue Leaves is about “humiliation and the cruelties people inflict on each other.”  In spite of the underlying seriousness of the play, we should be prepared for dialed up laughter.

Director J. Barry Lewis opined that “my challenge is to bring the script to life by finding the comedy through the characters.  It is a narrative story and while a farce to an extent, it is not at the same break neck speed.  It is more of a comedy in a field of the absurd.  This type of theatre is complex so we generally sought out knowledgeable local actors, ones we’ve mostly worked with before, so we could quickly ramp up. Our audience is going to have fun seeing so many familiar actors in some unusual roles.”

He went on to add, “And don’t underestimate the importance of the New York City scene, and the Vietnam era of the play.  There is a constant state of anxiety and high expectations of the Pope’s visit. It captures the American Dream of hope.  The central theme of the hollowness of seeking celebrity status is omnipresent.”  

In that regard, its relevancy to today is uncanny, celebrity worship, anxiety about our political situation, and hope for its resolution.

Vanessa Morosco, Bruce Linser, Elena Maria Garcia

Photo by Tim Stepien

Bruce Linser, well known to the PBD audience as a director and the manager of PBD’s Dramaworkshop plays zookeeper / woefully-mediocre-songwriter-seeking-fame-and-fortune, Artie Shaughnessy.  I asked him what it feels like to be on the stage again and without hesitation he said “it’s good being back on the stage and it’s a forceful reminder as to how difficult it is to be a really good actor. I love playing Artie.  Guare was very mindful that comedy could undermine the character development. He’s a fascinating and heartbreaking character and I hope to bring those attributes forth so the audience will feel for him.”

Linser comes to the stage with an extensive musical performance background so he’s very comfortable playing this frustrated songwriter and performing his grade B songs.  As he added “Artie’s musical abilities and works are good enough to pass as songs but bad enough to be funny.”

The two female leads have names in the play which sound like they were made-up by sitcom writer, Artie’s girlfriend Bunny Flingus (played by Vanessa Morosco) and Artie’s wife Bananas Shaughnessy (played by Elena Maria Garcia, her PBD debut).

Bunny is the downstairs neighbor who is pushing Artie to move to California in pursuit of the celebrity status they both so desperately want.  Vanessa Morosco said “I love playing the role of Bunny as she’s excitingly unpredictable and is subject to fantasies. I also love this play, which has an incredible place in the canon of American plays, with Guare entreating the close attention of the audience as characters routinely break the fourth wall to argue their case or to express their private thoughts.”

Poor Bananas, for whom Artie is seeking an institution to take her off his hands, and release him into the dreams he has for himself and Bunny.  But Bananas has moments of lucidity and insight as well as drastic mood changes.  It is a challenging part, and has been Elena Maria Garcia’s “dream role.”  Why?  As she explained, “I feel a very close relationship to this play as I wrote my thesis on it when I studied drama.  And the character of Bananas particularly fascinated me as I was drawn by her innocence as well as being in the center of a hurricane of action around her.”

The play has hilarious subplots and therefore in addition to the three leads there is an extensive cast, featuring, in alphabetical order, Irene Adjan, Jim Ballard, Austin Carroll, Elizabeth Dimon, Margery Lowe, and Krystal Millie Valdes (PBD debut).  Rounding out the cast are Timothy Bowman (PBD debut) and Pierre Tannous.  Scenic design is by Victor Becker, costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, lighting design is by Kirk Bookman, and sound design is by Steve Shapiro.

It promises to be a fun filled and thought provoking production at The Don & Ann Brown Theatre on Clematis Street beginning May 17 through June 2.

Update: May 18 Review of the play at this link:  http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2019/05/dramaworks-scores-comic-and.html

‘Waiting for Someone to Explain It’ Now Published

Having written this blog for some dozen years, by the end of last year I felt it was time to make it less of “a job” and more focused on things I enjoy rather than those I obsess over.  That meant less political and current affairs commenting (although I’ll never say never to those subjects in the future).  The present political and economic landscape invites day to day commentary, but I’ve decided to resist it to preserve my sanity.  It is truly a case of existential dread and exhaustion.

Nonetheless, I also decided to mostly exit those subjects by making a declarative statement in the form of a book based on the extensive entries from the past.  Therefore, Waiting for Someone to Explain It; The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense (North Palm Beach, Lacunae Musing, 2019),348 Pages, $13.95 is now available in paperback from Amazon and their extensive distribution network. 

The irony of selecting Amazon KDP as my publishing platform hasn’t been lost on me as when I was a publisher I dealt with Amazon in its infancy and now it deals with me in my dotage. 

It is also ironic that it should be published the same week as the Mueller Report which to some extent provides some of the answers I’ve been “waiting for.”  Yet Trump is as much a symptom as a cause. The book reveals the deep roots of our cultural civil war and the intransigence of political polarization, and one person’s quest to come to terms with them. 

It argues that we’ve become inured to the outrageous and accommodative of the absurd.  It points to a deep vein of anti-intellectualism in this country, questioning the veracity of climate change, championing the “right” to open carry weapons, and leading to the worship of false idols: 24 x 7 streaming entertainment.  We’ve become a nation needing immediate gratification, no matter what the societal consequences of borrowing against the future or becoming somnambulists in front of liquid crystal display screens.

Who could have imagined the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States?  As his candidacy ramped up, so did my commentary, all encapsulated in “Waiting.”

The book documents the election of such an unsuitable candidate, who has proved to be worse than feared, a “crazy maker” a gas-lighter of reality, a believer in his own mendacity.  These issues populate the entries.  As Eric Hoffer said in his classic The True Believer (1951), “We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”  During the period I sought out other expert journalists, psychologists, bloggers, economists, and even novelists in an attempt to understand.

The publicity release at the end of this entry explains the title and more about the rationale.  It is not simply a collection of entries from the blog.  There is a narrative tying things together and the entries themselves have been edited to minimize redundancies and present them better in print. 

As an ex-publisher it’s also been a labor of love, to write a book, even participate in its design, bringing me back to my start in publishing in 1964 as a production assistant.  So much has changed since then in the industry.  For me, the publication was as much about the journey. I think of it as an act of professional closure as well as a cry for the kind of democracy our forefathers envisioned. 

A Musical Week

It’s our universal language and while the political discourse is discordant, music seems to bring out our commonalities.  Our favorite musical genres are songs from Broadway, the Great American Songbook, and Jazz and so it was with much anticipation that we looked forward to last week which began with a show at the Delray Beach Playhouse, I Believe in You! – The Songs of Frank Loesser.

Ann arranged a preshow dinner at Racks Fish House off Delray’s famous (and congested) Atlantic Avenue, a happening place.  It was a balmy early April evening, with a nice breeze so we dined al fresco.  Imagine our surprise reading the appetizer menu which included Copps Island, CT oysters!  Copps Island which is connected at low tide to Crow Island is where we have taken our boat for the last 35 years during the summers, anchoring there on weekends.  So here we were, some 1,250 miles away dining on wild oysters from those very waters.  These are bottom planted as opposed to cage or floating trays and the oysters are known for “sweet briny flavor and plump meats. “  It was a nice and nostalgic start to the evening.

Delray Beach Playhouse which opened in 1947 is a community theatre featuring everything from one person acts to full scale plays.  They have a dedicated audience, we now among them.  But who knew, the playhouse is on Lake Ida, a fresh water lake right off of I95, comprising 121 acres, but seeming much larger than that as it is long and narrow.  Looking at it is reminiscent of our days on Lake George in NY and Candlewood Lake in CT as one can see similar boat houses and lake front homes.

I Believe in You! – The Songs of Frank Loesser was narrated by Randolph DelLago who has been the Resident Artistic Director of the Playhouse since 1982.  He also sings in this production.  When one thinks of Frank Loesser, one recalls the iconic Guys and Dolls, one of the great classic musicals of Broadway’s Golden Era.  It perhaps has more recognizable songs than any other musical, including those of Rogers and Hammerstein.  He only wrote four other musicals, The Most Happy Fella and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, being the most notable.  Songs were performed from all of these with original still scenes projected on a backdrop.  The Most Happy Fella has one of the most moving rhapsodic opera style songs ever written for the Great White Way, “My Heart is So Full of You,” one of my favorites for the piano, with an exotic bridge section of eight bars.

But Loesser, who was cast out by his family as they thought “songwriting” was beneath their dignity (his father was a piano teacher and his brother was a classical piano prodigy), found his roots in popular song in Hollywood before migrating to Broadway.  There are many memorable songs he wrote for The Great American Songbook and this show had many, such as “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You,” “Heart and Soul,” “On a Slow Boat to China,” “Two Sleepy People,”“Baby, It’s Cold Outside,”“No Two People,” and “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year” (the latter being another personal piano favorite of mine).  Along with DelLago, performances were given by Alicia Branch-Stafford, a soprano, baritone William Stafford, and Hanz Eneart who added a little cabaret dancing to the show as well as joining the ensemble in song with a comedic rendition of” Once in Love with Amy.”

Breaking up the week was a trip to Peanut Island with my friend John, a destination on the boat which will become more frequent as the water warms to bathtub temperatures.  Amazing that at one time in my life, jumping into the waters off of Copps Island into 70 degree water was refreshing but now wadding into Peanut’s current 79 degree water seems difficult!  Maybe that’s because the air temperature on Thursday was in the high 80s.  Got home late in the afternoon, just in time to clean the boat with John, shower, and get ready to go to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.

There we saw West Side Story towards the end of its run, so I am not publishing a full review.  This is what the Maltz Theatre does best but, still, we were a little concerned about seeing this yet again.  Could it still possibly be fresh (although the music by Bernstein and lyrics by Sondheim are immortal)?

The short answer is a resounding yes!  I think some of the classic musicals are being looked at in a new light, due to the times and the influence of Hamilton.  Most recently this is apparent with the Circle in the Square’s current production of Oklahoma which some have criticized as a travesty, irreverent to Rogers and Hammerstein’s intent.  I’m not too sure, although that was my knee jerk reaction.  Now, thinking about it, and reading more about it, I’m willing to be persuaded and therefore we’re going to see it sometime in August.  I’ll be lining up for the chili and corn bread!

There is a dark side to Oklahoma, as in all of the R&H plays.  Just think of Billy Bigalow’s corruptibility in Carousel, or the racial tensions of South Pacific and The King and I, the lurking Nazi shadows in The Sound of Music.  These musicals were played out for the audiences of their times with relatively happy resolutions (just what was expected then).  One could cast them now in an entirely different light and why not?

In a sense, the Maltz’s interpretation of West Side Story has been so influenced.  A framing device of Hurricane Maria has been introduced.  How ironic is that, the Maria of the story picking up after Hurricane Maria, alone with her memories of Tony?  This scene reprises at the end of the show.  It was a lovely, moving touch, particularly in the light of how this terrible storm has been politicized.

And with Puerto Rican born Marcos Santana’s direction and musical staging, we have more of a take on the Sharks rather than the Jets.  The hell-bent fury of xenophobic victimization is explosively probed by Angel Lozada who plays Bernardo.  Michelle Alves performance as Anita is more than up to the easily remembered performance of Chita Rivera in that part.  Alves is every bit as dynamic as a dancer and is a very talented vocalist as well.

Not enough praise can be directed toward Jim Schubin who plays Tony and Evy Ortiz as Maria.  Schubin brings a strong sense of constant optimism and wonder to the role as well as a clear tenor voice.  Ortiz is the ideal Maria, a soprano and coloratura who is radiant in the role of Maria (she was recently on the West Side Story national tour).  They had the perfect chemistry as Tony and Maria and their duets soared.

The choreography by Al Blackstone (with additional choreography by the director), gives a hat tip to Jerome Robbins’ choreography but is original and pulsating on the Maltz stage.  It’s a smaller cast than the original musical, but one would not know it.

With the refugee crisis of our times, it was time to look at West Side Story through a different lens, and the Maltz comes through. 

And last night we attended the 1^st Palm Beach International Jazz Festival, the first, we hope, of many in the future.  It is the idea of one of South Florida’s premier jazz singers, Yvette Norwood-Tiger, who has traveled the world with her interpretations of jazz classics, particularly songs sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.  She performs in six languages including English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Xhosa.

She created an afternoon and evening performance with different groups and singers.  We attended the evening performance and thus my comments are confined to that.

First up was Marlow Rosado, a Latin Jazz pianist from Puerto Rico, and his group.  Rasado is a salsero, and is imposing at the piano with his driving salsa rhythms, somewhat reminiscent of Monte Alexander.  I said to Ann that I’ve never seen a pianist who could pass as a football tight end and the physicality of his performance spoke wonders.  He posted last night’s performance on Facebook, so you can catch him there.

 

Next up was Eric & The Jazzers, a South Florida group of professional musicians that play swing/bebop from the great era of Duke Ellington.  Eric Trouillot also served as MC for the night’s performances, a guy from the Bronx who brought out the best of the very well represented NYC crowd (including us).

His group’s trumpet player, Yamin Mustafa, is one of the best we’ve heard and pianist, Chad Michaels, obviously has studied Oscar Peterson’s technique closely. As Mustafa said, the group’s musical selections are eclectic.

But the star of the night was clearly the evening’s organizer, Yvette Norwood-Tiger.  Yvette is a survivor of a benign yet life-threatening brain tumor because of its size and position, but had a successful operation some seven years ago.  Every time we’ve seen her she encourages the audience to “find that door opening” and for her it is singing Horace Silver’s jazz classic "Song for My Father."  Naturally, Yvette means it quite literally, thanking God for the opportunity to continue on with her unique gifts, a powerful yet sometimes subtle interpreter of the Great American Songbook. 

Backing her up musically were all the “old gang” we see almost every Sunday night at Double Roads in Jupiter, her musical director for the evening and oh-so talented pianist, also the co founder of the Jupiter Jazz Society, Rick Moore.  Along with Rick were Marty Gilman, on sax and flute, Joshua Ewers on bass and Michael Mackey on trumpet.  Marty is a multitalented musician who can play a large number of instruments at the professional level and we watched Joshua and Michael while they were still in high school, and have now grown into professional musicians in their own right.

And to bring this entry back to where it began (remember, Copps Island, in the Norwalk CT chain of islands), I learned that Horace Silver (Yvette’s tribute composer), was born in Norwalk, CT so it seems that all roads lead back to our years there.