'Blue Leaves' yields strong performances
By Taylor Kennamer
Old Gold and Black Reviewer

The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare’s three-act play, kicked off the 2001-2002 MainStage season on Oct. 3. This production might not be, to paraphrase a line from the play, the biggest thing since the premiere of Cleopatra, but it is a solid, thought-provoking effort filled with familiar faces.

Blue Leaves, directed by J.K. Curry and set in 1964 Brooklyn, chronicles one pivotal day in the life of one very dysfunctional family. Senior Ryan Fries is Artie Shaugnessy, zookeeper and wannabe songwriter whom the audience first encounters while he is performing less than successfully at an amateur night. Encouraging George is his star-struck mistress and downstairs neighbor, Bunny Flingus, played to the edge of perfection by senior Julia Schmidt. Sophomore Joey Picard turns in a fantastic performance as Ronnie Shaughnessy, Artie’s son, the AWOL ex-altar boy turned soldier, while senior Erin Wade steals the show as Bananas, Artie’s mentally ill wife. Rounding out the cast are senior Hillary Heard as Corrinna Stroller, freshman Madeline Smith, junior Katie Henderson and senior Amber Wiley as nuns, freshman Scott Thompson as a military policeman, freshman George Graves as the Man in White and freshman Andrew Rinehart as the much-lauded but seldom seen Billy Einhorn.

This play packs such a diverse range of emotions into 90 minutes that it almost defies description. On the day of the Pope’s visit to New York, all hell breaks out in the Shaughnessy household. The action hinges on Artie’s desire to go to Hollywood and write music for the movies (he repeatedly decries that he’s too old to be young talent), and Bunny’s determination to get the two of them there and Bananas into a mental hospital at any cost. Fries becomes Artie, a small man with big dreams, whose impotent rages give his small gestures of tenderness toward his wife a startling poignancy.

Schmidt, clad in garish Patsy Cline-esque pink, serves as comic relief with a startling edge of cruelty. Her character will have sex with Artie but won’t cook for him because “we have to save something for the honeymoon.”

Wade’s Bananas shuffles about in a housedress and mismatched shoes, revealing that she has recently attempted to slit her wrists with spoons and no longer leaves the apartment. In one hysterical moment she exclaims, “You wish I were fatter so there were more of me to hate!” Wade is the ideal mouthpiece for this overwrought woman. Her tension is palpable, her breathless struggle to cling to reality gripping.

Meanwhile, Ronnie goes AWOL to avoid being shipped to Vietnam, and disguises himself as an altar boy in order to blow up the Pope. Picard is appropriately awkward, working himself into an outraged frenzy at his lot in life, only pausing to snivel and pitifully wipe his nose. All three nuns are beer-guzzling delights, and Heard’s Stroller has a sympathetic sweetness lacking in the other characters.

If you’re looking for light-hearted Dumb and Dumber-style laughs, this is not the play for you; if you’re interested in darkly, deadly funny black comedy with a twist of tragedy, The House of Blue Leaves will be on the boards until Sunday.