“House of Blue Leaves” wants to say something, and touches on a lot of grand themes—fame and media in society, the individual in our saturated world, the tension between dreams and reality. Unfortunately, it just ends up a mess, so nothing much comes through. One leaves feeling battered, rather than contemplative.
The play tells of the alternately madcap adventures and poignant tragedies of the Shaughnessy family, including selfish zookeeper Artie (Eddie Walsh, COL ’10), a mediocre singer-songwriter dreaming of making it big, his crazy (literally—her name is Bananas. Get it?) wife (Allison Curran, COL ’08), his mistress Bunny (a gorgeously charismatic Amanda Evans, COL ’08) and his psychopathic soldier son (Andrew Dolan, COL ’10). If that’s not enough, the second act adds deaf movie stars, parodies of nuns out of an SNL skit (with the exception of Rachel Caywood, COL ’10, a breath of fresh air and hilarious timing), a bomb, the Pope … well, I don’t want to give away any of the increasingly absurd and meaningless plot twists.
The set design is lovely, bringing a truthful sense of time and place—this all takes place in 1965, though that doesn’t really come through except for mild sexism and references to Sandra Dee and Vietnam. Costumes are passable and occasionally inventive, and the lighting serves the purposes of the play, unfortunately, breaking up scenes and muddling the fourth wall.
“House of Blue Leaves” is overstuffed and undercooked: issues are raised, tossed aside in the hurly-burly, then brought back sporadically or not at all. Revelations and turning points rise like bubbles, exploding and then disappearing as the next twist or moment occurs. One’s attention is not rewarded so much as manipulated and discarded, as story lines start and stop. There are too many balls in the air, and everyone seems to be in a different play (some characters even seem to be in several).
It all becomes too much. There are some intriguing ideas, but everything that goes on just gets in the way until one no longer cares about these characters and their increasingly layered story. Which is a shame, because there are a few great lines—especially from Bananas: “The other day I tried to slit my wrists with spoons”—and some truly effective moments, such as Act I’s creepy last gasp. But the tone is uneven, the characters are too often shaky and unrealistic and even basics—like distinguishing when the characters are talking to the audience and when they’re talking to each other—remain unclear. It’s just too hard to follow, and, therefore, too hard to care.
