The set of Wave Productions’ “The House of Blue Leaves” evokes the tiny, cluttered apartment of a starving musician in Queens, NY, 1965: the worn-out furniture, 1960s posters, mismatched rugs, papers and sheet music, old piano and beat-up, filthy kitchen set clearly left over from the previous decade.
Bunny Flingus (Communication senior Kim Farber), clad in bright pink and orange, has a wardrobe that’s as loud as she is. Bananas Shaughnessy (Communication junior Mamie Gummer) wanders around her apartment in her nightgown. And Artie Shaughnessy (Communication sophomore Michael Rosenblum) is in the middle of it all, trying to escape his insane wife, imagining running off to Los Angeles with his vivacious girlfriend to make it big with his simple songs and melodies. Artie is in his 40s and works at the Central Park Zoo. His dream is fading, and so is he.
“This is a piece that needs to be seen,” says the show’s producer, Communication sophomore Alex Glaser. “It’s about raw, human emotion shown in a farcical form.”
The play occurs in a single day: Oct. 4, 1965, the day the Pope came to New York City to speak to the United Nations about the Vietnam War. The characters in “Blue Leaves” are extreme. To capture their larger-than-life personas, the show’s director, Laura Savia, a Communication senior, asked the actors to look at their own lives to discover when they themselves are larger than life and to work from these expressions of the outrageous.
“Like all characters, Bunny is driven by what she wants and needs,” says Farber of her character. “What makes her different is that she doesn’t hide it. She’s a joy to play because she’s written as so stylistically farcical. It pushes me to embrace a caricature of a person, explore a heightened reality and find the humanity in a character written so large.”
The dialogue throughout the play switches between quick, biting lines and emotional scenes. Bananas’ lunacy is loopy and laughable but heartfelt. The audience sees what her life was and what it has become: house arrest and inordinate amounts of emotionally numbing pills. Bunny’s enthusiasm for life and fame aims to appeal to the audience as they learn about her many odd jobs and how she met Artie in her health club’s steam room.
The mind-blowing turn of events is rooted in real emotion, says producer Glaser. The characters have grand aspirations of fame and big hopes of love, none of which are fulfilled, she says.
“This is an important story to tell to a young audience because it makes us stare in the face of our worst fears of mediocrity or failure,” says Savia. “These people have the lives we hope to never find ourselves stuck in.”
“The House of Blue Leaves” was written by John Guare, who is best-known for his acclaimed play and film starring Will Smith, “Six Degrees of Separation.”
“Sometimes these characters are hard to believe,” says Glaser. “But Guare places them in an environment that allows them to be entirely human. There are certain moments when you realize, that’s what human nature is.”
‘The House of Blue Leaves’
When: Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 and 11 p.m.
Where: Louis Room
How much: $8 general, $5 students
Medill sophomore Rachel Wolff is a writer for PLAY. She can be reached at [email protected]
