| The House of Blue Leaves | |
|---|---|
 Poster byJames McMullan | |
| Written by | John Guare |
| Date premiered | 1966 |
| Place premiered | Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Waterford, Connecticut |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | A zookeeper longs to write songs for the movies as his AWOL son and the Pope arrive in New York City. |
| Genre | Black comedy |
| Setting | A bar and an apartment inQueens, New York, 1965. |
The House of Blue Leaves is aplay by American playwrightJohn Guare which premieredOff-Broadway in 1971, and was revived in 1986, both Off-Broadway and onBroadway, and was again revived on Broadway in 2011. The play won theDrama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play and theObie Award for Best American Play in 1971. The play is set in 1965, whenPope Paul VI visited New York City.
The play is set inSunnyside,Queens,New York City,New York, in 1965, on the dayPope Paul VI visited. Theblack comedy focuses on Artie Shaughnessy, azookeeper who dreams of making it big inHollywood as a songwriter. Artie wants to take his girlfriend Bunny with him to Hollywood. His wife Bananas is aschizophrenic and destined for the institution that provides the play's title. Their son Ronnie, aGI scheduled for deployment toVietnam, has goneAWOL. Three nuns are eager to see the pope and end up in Artie's apartment. A political bombing mistakenly occurs in the apartment.
The first act ofThe House of Blue Leaves was first staged in 1966 at theEugene O'Neill Theater Center inWaterford, Connecticut. According to Jane Kathleen Curry, (Assistant Professor of Theater at Wake Forest University) Guare "rewrote the second act many times and attributes part of his difficulty to his lack of technical skill in writing for a large number of characters in a full-length play."[1]
The House of Blue Leaves opened on February 10, 1971Off-Broadway at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre, where it ran for 337 performances. Directed byMel Shapiro, the cast includedFrank Converse,Harold Gould,Katherine Helmond,William Atherton,Anne Meara and Robert Burton.
A revival directed byJerry Zaks was staged Off-Broadway at theMitzi E. Newhouse Theater atLincoln Center for the Performing Arts, opening on March 19, 1986, then transferring to Broadway at theVivian Beaumont Theater on April 29, 1986, where it played five months before transferring again to thePlymouth Theatre on October 14, 1986, closing on March 15, 1987, for a total run of 398 performances. The Off-Broadway cast includedSwoosie Kurtz (Bananas),John Mahoney (Artie),Stockard Channing (Bunny),Christopher Walken (Billy),Ben Stiller (Ronnie, in his stage debut), andJulie Hagerty (Corrinna).Danny Aiello replaced Walken as Billy when the production moved to Broadway.Christine Baranski joined the production on June 24, 1986, as Bunny, andPatricia Clarkson joined the production on June 3, 1986, as Corrinna.[2]
It won theDrama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival. It was also nominated for theTony Award for Best Play.
A 2011Broadway revival was staged byDavid Cromer at theWalter Kerr Theatre. StarringBen Stiller (Artie),Edie Falco (Bananas),Christopher Abbott (Ronnie), andJennifer Jason Leigh (Bunny), the production began previews on April 4, opening on April 15 for a limited 16-week engagement.[3]
Directed byKirk Browning andJerry Zaks, the play was staged at thePlymouth Theatre in 1987 withSwoosie Kurtz,John Mahoney,Christine Baranski, andBen Stiller specifically for a broadcast on thePBS seriesAmerican Playhouse. The telefilm was broadcast in May 1987.[4][5][6][7]
Thefilm adaptation was shot before an audience,[8] withminicams.
Clive Barnes, in his review of the 1971 Off-Broadway production forThe New York Times wrote: "You will have noticed, I presume, that comedy has taken on a hysterical edge. The laughter is manic, and the world is awry. Few worlds are more awry than John Guare's, whose play, 'The House of Blue Leaves,' opened last night at the Truck and Warehouse Theater.Mr. Guare's play is mad, funny, at times very funny, and sprawling."[9]
TheVariety reviewer of the 2011 revival wrote: "Guare’s iconic play not only holds up, it still sets the bar for smart comic lunacy.... Guare is famous for the zany plots that illustrate his surreal visions of what passes for modern civilization.... But the key to the play lies beyond these apartment walls, in the broader framework of the unsettled period of the mid-Sixties, when America was still reeling from the assassination of JFK and just becoming aware of what was going on in Vietnam."[10]
