Palm Beach Dramaworks’ season concludes with its
production of John Guare’s Obie Award-winning play, The House of Blue Leaves, another outstanding PBD theatrical
achievement. On one level there is a
manic zaniness, a laugh out loud plot, but below that there is the characters' inherent
desperation. Their lives are out of
control. PBD's production unpeels
all these disparate layers achieving exactly what Guare must have envisioned,
giving us a play completely relevant for our own time, and for all time, demonstrating
the futility of equating happiness with fleeting fame.
The plot is an ingenious situation comedy about a
zookeeper who lives in his own menagerie in a Sunnyside Queens apartment in
1965. Artie Shaughnessy is also a mediocre
songwriter which he and his girlfriend, his downstairs neighbor Bunny, see as a
ticket to stardom if they could only ditch his “crazy” wife Bananas in a mental
institution. They are hell-bent to go to
Hollywood where his boyhood chum, Billy Einhorn, has become a famous
director.
There, Artie presumably will become a famous writer of
musical numbers for film, but just to make sure, Bunny insists they must get
the Pope’s blessing during his trip from the airport, past their apartment on
Queens Blvd, ultimately on his way to Yankee Stadium for a speech in 1965. (No kidding, the Pope made such a trip then
with the world hoping his visit would help end the Vietnam War). Everyone wants in the action with the Pope,
three Nuns who wind up in the apartment and the Shaughnessy son, Ronnie, who
has gone AWOL from the military to “take care of” the Pope (if you know what I
mean). Also arriving is Billy’s
hard-of-hearing girlfriend, the movie star, Corrinna. Why? Because Billy too will soon arrive in NY as they
are planning to go off to Australia for Corrinna’s ear operation (“Australia’s
the place for ears!”) and to film Billy’s Australian epic, entitled, what else,
“Kangaroo.” Did I miss anyone? So sets the stage for a dramatic denouement while
many animals in the Central Park zoo are giving birth simultaneously.
 |
Vanessa Morosco, Elena Maria Garcia, Bruce Linser
Photo by Samantha Mighdoll
|
Here are all the elements of farce superimposed on the
tragedy of a world gone inexplicable, which encapsulates the entire play in an
absurdist undertow. The cast frequently
breaks the fourth wall, engaging the audience directly, yet another unusual
technique employed by Guare. This works
brilliantly because it feels so natural.
And how many playwrights compose their own songs and lyrics for a
non-musical drama, with Artie frequently and frantically compelled to perform a
lick or two on the piano?
In full disclosure, I lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan in
the 1960’s and was born and bred not far from the same Queens Blvd in the play,
near where the playwright himself grew up. It’s very personal to me, the geography, but
most of all the events transpiring just at that time; the horror of the Vietnam
War, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, the transformation from
the placid decade of the fifties to one of upheaval and anxiety. These were assimilated in our popular culture,
our theatres, our literature, our newspapers and airwaves. They lurk below the surface in Guare’s idiosyncratic
The House of Blue Leaves. It was not terribly unlike today’s wacky world,
but without the Internet and social media. Yet, celebrity worship, fame and the quest for
notoriety are among the play’s driving themes.
Director J. Barry Lewis punches up the hilarity level so
the audience starts laughing at the first glimpse of Artie, but to make this
play work, he walks that fine line between slapstick and poignancy. In particular, Artie and his wife Bananas are
not one dimensional characters, but fully fleshed out vulnerable human beings
we can all relate to. Lewis knows exactly
how to engage the audience to feel for them as well as laugh at them. A frenetic chase scene through the
Shaughnessy’s cramped apartment demonstrates Lewis’ mastery of split second
timing to squeeze every ounce of hilarity from his characters. And at those moments where pathos is called
for, he is at the top of his game in wringing all the emotion out of his
players and audience alike. It is
another J. Barry Lewis directorial master class.
Bruce Linser is Artie Shaughnessy, the struggling songwriter who is a zookeeper by day and lounge piano player/singer on local amateur
nights. Linser is well known locally as
a musical director and an accomplished actor as well. This is a tour de force role for him. He not only successfully brings his musical
training to this part, but as an actor he brilliantly displays the vulnerability
of a man who is out of control in his life, manipulated by the demands of his
girlfriend Bunny who has beguiled Artie to reach way beyond his abilities. He is also the victim of an American Dream of
fame gone haywire. There is a deeply touching
desperation in his portrayal of Artie, a man who more than once says “I’m too old to be a young talent” with such
comic sadness.
Linser is especially effective in suddenly changing
course, showing true love and care for his unstable wife, resisting attempts to
institutionalize her on the one hand, but ultimately relenting to Bunny’s demands
and his own need to escape. He thus
finds her a “home” which he describes to Bananas as one where there are beautiful
blue leaves on the trees. He looks at
her lovingly and at times holds her with the love of yesteryear. Linser makes Artie an everyman tragic figure,
succumbing to the demands of his exterior world. Artie, who frantically sought a blue spotlight
when we first meet him playing the piano at a Queens Blvd lounge, gets his blue
spot at the end, the metaphor full circle.
 |
Elena Maria Garcia, Bruce Linser
Photo by Samantha Mighdoll
|
Besides Artie, the most fully realized and developed
character in the play is Bananas, played by Elena Maria Garcia, whose antics on
stage are belied by sudden clarity of thinking, sometimes the only really sane
person as the fool was in Elizabethan drama.
As with her son, there is a shame based scar from her past, but in her
case, her imaginary past. Garcia sits on
the edge of the stage and tells the story to the audience which culminates in
her being humiliated on TV, Garcia achingly relating “Thirty million people
watch Johnny Carson and they all laugh. At me…I’m nobody…Why can’t they love
me?”
In some ways, the character of Bananas could be compared
to Mary Tyrone or Blanche Dubois from conventional award-winning dramas. Although essentially a comedy, Garcia brings
her character into the tragic realm with her acting and Guare’s incredible
script. Like Mary Tyrone, Bananas is a
victim of drugs, not morphine but psychiatric drugs which deprive her of the
ability to feel. Her fear of leaving the
apartment for treatment relates to those drugs: “I don’t mind feeling nothing as
long as I’m in a place I remember feeling.”
Shock treatments add to her disorientation and fear of institutionalization.
It is a role that cries out for an actress who can
sustain detachment, looking blank and uncomprehending, yet grasping the
significant moments. She is a woman
fighting for her life. Garcia's performance is
heartbreaking as she struggles to stay home and to help her son Ronnie as well. Her
facial expressions while other actors are engaged speak volumes of pain and
even insight.
The comic fulcrum of the play is Vanessa Morosco’s performance
as Bunny Flingus, Artie’s downstairs neighbor and wife in waiting, as soon as
they can get rid of Bananas. Morosco’s portrayal
of Bunny is primarily played for laughs which keep coming. She has a burning ambition for Artie (and
therefore herself) to make it big in Hollywood with the help of Artie’s friend,
Billy. Morosco is a gifted physical
comedian as she struts in her high heels and leopard tights or skin tight skirt. Guare gives Bunny some of the best comic
dialogue in the play, but even when not delivering lines, the audience is primed
to crack up by Morosco’s gestures alone.
 |
Vanessa Morosco, Bruce Linser
Photo by Samantha Mighdoll
|
Bunny admits to being a bad lay and will sleep with Artie
at the drop of a hat. But she is holding out
something much more special for her marriage: “My cooking is the only thing I
got to lure you on with and hold you with.
Artie, we got to keep some magic for the honeymoon.” As a leitmotif, this comes up again and again
and has a bearing on a twist in the plot later.
It is hard to believe another actress could give this role that sexy, zany,
eccentric punch that Morosco delivers so effortlessly.
Austin Carroll plays Artie and Bunny’s son, Ronnie, who
opens up Act II with an audience heart to heart about his damaging experience
when he was a 12 year old boy. He had
heard that Billy Einhorn, his father’s best friend from Hollywood, would be
visiting NYC to cast his movie, “Huckleberry Finn.” He secretly prepared himself for an “audition”
and Carroll then manically demonstrates the memory of that night, laughing and
crying, wildly dancing across the stage concluding with a hilarious dying swan
ballet gesture. Billy just assumed from his
bizarre behavior that he was mentally challenged and that humiliation set Ronnie
on a course for revenge, his objective to be on the cover of Time magazine. The Pope’s arrival gives his delusions
flight. More fodder for the absurdist
tilt and the theme of seeking fame or in this case infamy.
As the Pope is parading by on Queens Blvd, Billy’s
girlfriend, Hollywood starlet, Corrinna Stroller arrives. PBD veteran of untold
productions, Margery Lowe, dials up the laughter as her hearing aids give out
and she pretends to understand people, perplexing other characters by her
amusing inappropriate responses.
To add to this farce, suddenly three nuns show up, played
by Elizabeth Dimon, Irene Adjan and Krystal Millie Valdes. If the first two names sound familiar it is
because they have appeared in many South Florida productions, including PBD. It was fun to see them in cameo roles. It is Valdes’ PBD debut as “the little nun.” All three nuns seek their own moment of fame
and surround the TV so they can have photos taken of them “with” Jackie Kennedy
or Mayor Lindsay. As Adjan exclaims
“Mayor Lindsay dreamboat! Mayor Wagner
ugh!” But when they spy Corrinna, they
really lose it. More celebrity worship,
with the “A list” celebrity, the Pope himself appearing on the “sacred shrine:”
a black and white TV with a rabbit ear antenna.
We finally meet Billy, the successful Hollywood director,
played by PBD veteran Jim Ballard. Reclining
on the couch he says, “Good to see you Artie” with teabags covering his weary eyes. Ballard is convincing as a Hollywood mogul, one
who must surround himself with people and admiration, delivering the supremely
ironical line to Artie: “You’re my touch with reality.” And some foreshadowing: “Love is all Bananas
needs.”
Pierre Tannous plays the Military Policeman who comes to
round up Ronnie and throw him in the military brig and Tim Bowman the Institution
Orderly who Artie called to pack up Bananas for the Funny Farm.
Palm Beach Dramaworks’ technical crew work hard to bring
off this absurdist comedy with a relatively large cast. Brian O’Keefe’s costumes more than meet the
challenge and I suspect the award-winning Designer had a ball conceiving them,
particularly Bunny’s over the top 60’s garb.
Such a pastiche of leopard tights and pink sweater with plastic booties
and later her gold speckled black high heels with a skin tight skirt and
dazzling brocaded waist-cinched jacket take your breath away. You simply cannot imagine her looking any
other way.
Bananas’ outfits, by contrast, solidly reflect her broken
mental state, particularly the old flannel nightgown and “shmata” blue sweater and
frayed robe which reflect her disheveled personality, a sharp contrast to her
one appearance in an elaborate dress with fake flowers and multiple crinoline
petticoats doing a runway fashion walk saying “it’s a shame it’s 1965. I’m like the best dressed woman of 1954.” Billy’s outfit screams Successful Movie Mogul,
with his suede jacket, cream silk scarf, and huge gold chain hanging on his
chest. And of course, unremarkable Artie
is irresistible in his serviceable Zoo Keepers khaki shirt and other nondescript clothes of a typical
hard working put-upon sixties man.
Scenic design by Victor Becker showcases the shabby apartment
that might have seen better days when Bananas was well and could keep up with
the housekeeping. Now it simply reflects
the exhausted state of the tenants who are barely hanging on. Their apartment is oddly pressed up against
another apartment house with Ronnie’s bedroom seemingly built into that
building, and has an outside fire escape at an odd angle neither going up or
down – a hat tip to the absurdist sense of reality. The space allows just enough room for a
hysterical chase around and over the furniture.
Even the wall photos reflect a happier time when Bananas and Artie and
Billy and his wife would frequent hot spots in the city.
Steve Shapiro’s sound design is branded 1965 by music
such as “Hard Day’s Night” and sound clips of the Pope’s speech in the
background. Shapiro also “plays”
Corrinna’s hearing aid breaking down with an exaggerated piercing sound which early
hearing aids made, all part of the hilarity.
Lighting by Kirk Bookman is mostly full on with
characters bathed in light, with appropriate lighting for the opening lounge
scene and then finally the blue spotlight turning into a stage bathed in blue
for the dramatic conclusion.
Shows like this are rare with realism, absurdism, comedy,
and tragedy coexisting, toggling from one to another and, equally rare, a
theatre company that can find that exquisite delicate balance.
"When famous people go to sleep at night, it’s
us they dream of, Artie. The famous ones
– they’re the real people. We’re the
creatures of their dreams.”…..Bunny
Flingus
 |
| PBD Cast and Crew on Opening Night |
