NewsUpper SchoolFine Arts
Director's Notes for House of Blue Leaves
Sep 19, 2000 8:00 AM
By Stefan Eady - Faculty
The Darlington Players kickoff production for this year is John Guare's Tony-winning farce, "The House of Blue Leaves." Written in the seventies and revived in a very successful production in the eighties, this play (by the writer of "Six Degrees of Separation") reflects hilariously and sometimes sadly on America's obsession with fame. In Act I, Bunny Flingus is preparing to see the Pope as he rides through Queens on his way to the U.N. She enters with an enormous "I Love Paul" button. She says, "They ran out of Welcome Pope buttons so I ran downstairs and got my leftover from when the Beatles were here!" This deft little joke lies at the center of the play's theme of how we allow celebrity to blur all distinctions into one dichotomy--famous and not famous.
Artie is stuck in his routine life with his crazy wife, Bananas, but desperately wants to be a songwriter. He agonizes over the success of his boyhood friend Billy, now a famous Hollywood producer, complaining that he [Artie] is "too old to be a young talent." Bananas links her suicide attempt with her failure to connect with four famous people. Artie's girlfriend Bunny is pushing him to change his life so that she can advance her own ambitions. She tells Bananas, "You're a nobody, and you suffer like a nobody." Meanwhile, Artie and Banana's son, Ronnie, courts fame by attempting to assasinate the pope.
These situations may not sound very funny, yet House of Blue Leaves is billed as a farce. Filmmaker Louis Malle, writing about Guare's plays, says, "His work is a unique, indelicate balance between the tragic, the funny, the weird, our daily bread. A dramatic mood is suddenly lit up by a laugh, comedy turns scary in a flash." Many of the laughs in House are costly laughs, drawing their energy from the pain of characters who can't get what they want, and who are unaware that what they want is bad for them. This dark comedy is in the tradition of Macbeth's drunken, bawdy porter--making sexual puns while his king is murdered--and Hamlet's gravediggers--plying their gallows humor as they dig the grave of the play's most innocent character. The final moment of House of Blue Leaves should cause some discussion. Like all farces, the play ends happily; unlike most farces, the happiness served up is fatal for some characters.
The play is set on a real day in history, October 4th, 1965--the day of Pope Paul VI's visit to New York. His speech to the crowd in Yankee Stadium is quoted in the play's final scene. He says that Americans base "our conception of life . . . on . . . safeguarding the American spirit from those dangers which prosperity itself can entail and which the materialism of our day can make even more menacing." The House of Blue Leaves takes place among those whom prosperity has bypassed, and who have made an idol of material fame. Instead of preaching us a somber sermon, however, it
takes us on a comic rollercoaster through the not-so-comic country of frustrated ambitions, attempted suicide, terrorism, and shallow Hollywood glitz, showing both the absurdity and ultimate self-defeat of courting fame for its own sake.
As usual, our Darlington Players have proved more than equal to staging this very challenging material. Their performances are full of manic energy and genuine pathos, allowing us to feel compassion towards characters who often don't deserve it. We invite you to come and enjoy their work.
Thatcher Chair of English and English Department Chair David L. Power is the director of "The House of Blue Leaves."
We recommend The House of Blue Leaves for ages 14 and up.
Artie is stuck in his routine life with his crazy wife, Bananas, but desperately wants to be a songwriter. He agonizes over the success of his boyhood friend Billy, now a famous Hollywood producer, complaining that he [Artie] is "too old to be a young talent." Bananas links her suicide attempt with her failure to connect with four famous people. Artie's girlfriend Bunny is pushing him to change his life so that she can advance her own ambitions. She tells Bananas, "You're a nobody, and you suffer like a nobody." Meanwhile, Artie and Banana's son, Ronnie, courts fame by attempting to assasinate the pope.
These situations may not sound very funny, yet House of Blue Leaves is billed as a farce. Filmmaker Louis Malle, writing about Guare's plays, says, "His work is a unique, indelicate balance between the tragic, the funny, the weird, our daily bread. A dramatic mood is suddenly lit up by a laugh, comedy turns scary in a flash." Many of the laughs in House are costly laughs, drawing their energy from the pain of characters who can't get what they want, and who are unaware that what they want is bad for them. This dark comedy is in the tradition of Macbeth's drunken, bawdy porter--making sexual puns while his king is murdered--and Hamlet's gravediggers--plying their gallows humor as they dig the grave of the play's most innocent character. The final moment of House of Blue Leaves should cause some discussion. Like all farces, the play ends happily; unlike most farces, the happiness served up is fatal for some characters.
The play is set on a real day in history, October 4th, 1965--the day of Pope Paul VI's visit to New York. His speech to the crowd in Yankee Stadium is quoted in the play's final scene. He says that Americans base "our conception of life . . . on . . . safeguarding the American spirit from those dangers which prosperity itself can entail and which the materialism of our day can make even more menacing." The House of Blue Leaves takes place among those whom prosperity has bypassed, and who have made an idol of material fame. Instead of preaching us a somber sermon, however, it
takes us on a comic rollercoaster through the not-so-comic country of frustrated ambitions, attempted suicide, terrorism, and shallow Hollywood glitz, showing both the absurdity and ultimate self-defeat of courting fame for its own sake.
As usual, our Darlington Players have proved more than equal to staging this very challenging material. Their performances are full of manic energy and genuine pathos, allowing us to feel compassion towards characters who often don't deserve it. We invite you to come and enjoy their work.
Thatcher Chair of English and English Department Chair David L. Power is the director of "The House of Blue Leaves."
We recommend The House of Blue Leaves for ages 14 and up.
