Theater Review: The House of Blue Leaves

Theater Review: The House of Blue Leaves

A limping, paunchy zookeeper cracks the notes of his own crappy love songs. His girlfriend can’t keep a job and refuses him pre-marital cuisine. His wife grills Brillo pads for lunch and cringes like a dog unsure of receiving a pat or a beating. His AWOL soldier-son is going to blow up the Pope. And a nun steals his peanut butter. Such are the hilariously deranged and darkly violent elements of John Guare’s award-winning play The House of Blue Leaves, on thoroughly impressive display now at the Gamm Theatre.
     
Masterly Directing

In lesser hands Guare’s absurdist exploration of the vicious heart of the American Dream would be merely “crazy” characters doing “crazy” things: a spectacle that doesn’t offer us much to see. That’s not the case here. What gives the manic action on this stage such shape and meaning is the sure-handed guidance of veteran director Fred Sullivan, Jr. 

For one thing, he uses Patrick Lynch’s sophisticated set design—I’m not sure I’ve seen the Gamm’s minimal space put to such intelligent use—to tremendous effect. Characters keep coming and going through windows and doors, yet never seem to get anywhere. Further, the abrupt, resolutely anti-naturalist shifts in action and emotional tone are absurd in the intended sense, pointing beyond themselves to the deeper truths of the characters’ lives and the world they inhabit. That’s not at all easy to achieve, and so Sullivan deserves a lot of credit for expertly translating his love for this play into a smart, humane, provocative production.  

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(One criticism, though: I really wish Sullivan had restrained his impulses in the play’s conclusion. What happens between Artie Shaughnessy and his wife Bananas is enough, more than enough, without the adornment he added. Less can be more, even in plays that involve so much excess.)
 
A Powerful Ensemble

Coupled with Sullivan’s expert directing is a cast more than up to the challenges of this play. Tom Gleadow’s Artie is a shambling, desperate man who’s unaware of so much—from his musical plagiarism to how rancid his own heart has become from a disappointing life. It’s a strength of his performance that we never really like him—he’s too tiresomely needy and selfish for that—while still evoking our sympathy.
 

Jeanine Kane is breathtaking as Bananas Shaughnessy. It was deeply satisfying at times to watch her watching other characters—her sharp-angled face shifting with astonishing skill from a Munchian mask of mute, uncomprehending sorrow to a vulnerable child’s to, in moments of clarity, the woman you can see Artie falling in love with however long ago. Her lapses into pretending she’s Artie’s dog are truly, and truthfully, pathetic in more than one sense.
 
All in all, the physicality of her performance is remarkable, from the way she compulsively grips with trembling fingers the hem of her faded nightgown to the way she bravely strides forward in mismatched shoes when finally allowed to join her husband outside their apartment. Kane is a long-time member of the Gamm company, and this has to rank as one of her best performances.
 
A number of supporting players also merits special mention. As Ronnie Shaughnessy, Artie and Banana’s son, Marc Dante Mancini is a volatile, rictus-faced carrier of his father’s rage. Karen Carpenter plays the deafened starlet Corrinna Stroller, and she coils wonderfully around her own spine to convey her incomprehension at the chaos she’s been dropped into. Nuns played by Joan Batting, Milly Massey, and Julia Bartoletti are tiny wimple-wearing Mongols who swarm the Shaughnessy apartment, demanding beer and a TV now.
 
A Break-Out Performance

But it’s Rachel Dulude as Bunny Flingus who in important ways makes the play work so well. She crackles with energy and displays a razor sharp sense of comic timing the Gamm sure better make repeated use of in the future. Her Bunny is brazenly confident, for no apparent justifying reason whatsoever, and this is the thin mixture fueling her and Artie’s dream to make it big in California. 

As such, Dulude embodies with comically disturbing effect the optimism-cum-delusion that we’re all meant to be big stars. And her blithe cruelty to Bunny reflects the meanness inherent in this entirely American version of aspiration. We’ve seen her on the Gamm stage before in smaller roles (she was particularly good as one of the witches in last season’s Macbeth), but this is the first time Dulude has had such prominence. It’s entirely deserved.

All in all, this is a marvelous interpretation of one of our best modern plays. The House of Blue Leaves riotously and unflinchingly depicts the consequences of committing the greatest of American sins—that of not being a big success. The cast and crew of this fantastic production are entitled to our applause for how completely they have escaped that fate. 
 
The House of Blue Leaves plays through April 5 at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre. 172 Exchange Street, Pawtucket. Tickets are $41 and $49. Call 401.723.4266 or order online at gammtheatre.org.