THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES
The House of Blue Leaves is a zany comedy about the day the Pope made a visit to NYC. in 1965 and how the visit affects a frustrated middle aged songwriter who works as a zoo keeper and his mistress. Meanwhile his wife has not managed to come out of her room for 6 months. The son is in the military and has come home-AWOL- as he is mentally unstable---the time is the VIetnam War. The whole family has their hopes on Billy Einhorn who is in Hollywood and an old friend of Artie's. They feel he will take Artie to Hollywood and all will be well. But things change course when Billy comes with his hard of hearing girlfriend. Meanwhile Nuns have dropped in from the roof where they had been watching the Pope and we then find out the son has a bomb that will go off at any second. It is one crazy ride from beginning to end with laughter constantly along the way.
The play’s author, John Guare, uses his characters to accentuate the elusive search for fame, and also begs the question: What is normal?
Every wonderfully wacky character, from Artie to Bunny, to Bananas to Ronnie, to Billy to Corinna, and to a group of crazy nuns, are all searching for that ambiguous something that fame represents. They make us question: Which of these characters are really normal? And the question continues to linger at the end of the play.
But, what is normal? In today’s world of reality television, creating fame out of normal people makes The House of Blue Leaves more relevant now than ever before!
