 |
| William Atherton, Tom Flynn, Anne Meara, Katherine Helmond, Harold Gould, Carl Hunt, Frank Converse, Margaret Linn (on floor), Rita Karin, Alix Elias, Kay Michaels. |
Note: Several entries beginning with the letter H were inadvertently
overlooked when their turn came to be posted. They are now being posted, albeit
belatedly and out of alphabetical and numerical order.
THE HOUSE OF BLUE
LEAVES [Comedy-Drama/Films/Marriage/Religion/Show Business] A: John Guare;
D: Mel Shapiro; S: Karl Eigsti; C: Jane Greenwood; L: John Tedesco; P: Warren
Lyons and Betty Ann Besch; T: Truck and Warehouse Theatre (OB); 2/6/71-12/3/71
(337)
 |
| Katherine Helmond, Harold Gould. |
A multi-award-winning hit, with a first-rate company, about
a 40-year-old Queens zookeeper, Artie Shaughnessy (Harold Gould), who plans to
use the influence of an old Army friend, now a successful movie producer named
Billy Einhorn (Frank Converse), to launch his own career as a Hollywood
songwriter.
 |
| Ralph Meeker, John Glover, Katherine Helmond. |
The crazy plot is complicated by the presence of Artie’s
wacky mistress, Bunny Flingus (Anne Meara); his nutty wife, Bananas (Katherine
Helmond); his AWOL soldier son, Ronnie (William Atherton), who plans to blow up
the Pope (during his 1969 visit) as his cavalcade moves through Queens; three
nuns (Alix Elias, Kay Michaels, and Rita Karin) who accidentally wander into
Artie’s apartment and stay to watch the procession on TV; and the producer’s
deaf movie star paramour, Corinna Stroller (Margaret Linn), who refuses to
admit her infirmity.
As this is a black farce with a strong admixture of
surrealism, the son’s bomb does go off, but it is the movie star and tow of the
nuns who go sky high, not the Pontiff. Death also visits Bananas, whom Artie
strangles while the producer absconds with good old Bunny.
 |
| Peggy Pope, Katherine Helmond, Ralph Meeker. |
The House of Blue
Leaves was not to everyone’s taste, Harold Clurman, for example, deciding
it was “unfulfilled.” He did not, however, fail to notice that its attack on
the American cult of celebrity worship was effective and that it had many
scenes of hilarity and perception. Richard Watts caviled at the play’s “muddled”
personality, but he, too, laughed at its savage humor. It was “exasperating” to
Martin Gottfried—both “half wonderful” and “half crude and forced”—with an
excess of gags getting in the way of the writing’s lyrical qualities. And Clive
Barnes liked it greatly, yet was upset that the compassion we are meant to feel
for “the world’s lost,” a motif he discerned, never affected him. Others, like
Walter Kerr, wrote that this was “the most striking new American play of the
season.”
For the most part, the staging and acting were highly
admired, with Gould, Meara, and Helmond gaining the greatest favor. Helmond, in
fact, won the Clarence Derwent Award for Best Female Non-Featured Performance,
as well as topping Variety’s poll for
Best Supporting Actress. Guare took away the Outer Circle Award for his
playwriting, and the play itself was crowned with the New York Drama Critics
Circle Award for Best American Play.
 |
| Katherine Helmond, Peggy Pope. |
Several actors replaced during the run: Lee Allen, Ralph Meeker, and Joseph Bova replaced Harold Gould; John Glover and Glenn Walken replaced William Atherton; Peggy Pope and Jacqueline Brooks replaced Anne Meara, and so on.
