THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES Reviews

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 3:43pm

Today is Monday, April 25, marking the official opening night performance of the starry Broadway revival of John Guare's House of Blue Leaves, under the direction of David Cromer, following previews that began April 4 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

The cast of this limited 16-week engagement is led by Ben Stiller as Artie Shaughnessy, Edie Falco as Bananas Shaughnessy and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Bunny Flingus. Also featureed in the company are Thomas Sadoski as Billy Einhorn, Alison Pill as Corrinna Stroller, Mary Beth Hurt as Head Nun, Christopher Abbott as Ronnie Shaughnessy, Halley Feiffer as Little Nun, Susan Bennett as Second Nunn, Jimmy Davis as Military Policeman and Tally Sessions as White Man.

According to production notes: "Ben Stiller is Artie Shaughnessy, a zookeeper and wannabe songwriter, who is trying to cope with a schizophrenic wife (Falco), an impatient girlfriend (Leigh) and a visit from the Pope, all while sustaining his dream of hitting it big. [The play] is a satirical take on celebrity, religion, and the frequent merging of the two."

Best wishes to cast and crew!

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 4:55pm

Seeing it tonight. Very curious to see how it turns out.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:19pm

Any reviews yet?

[theatreguy]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:34pm

Here's Brantley (by way of the Oklahoman). Positive for Edie Falco, negative for the rest:

except when it's spoken by Falco — who gives a transfixing performance as a medicated madwoman longing to feel — there's little that's transporting here in Guare's wild, yearning language. Cromer has rebuilt his "House" in the style of kitchen-sink dramas, the kind in which unhappy families simmer in squalor and explode with a whimper. First staged in New York in 1971 (with a cast that included Stiller's mother, Anne Meara), "House" is usually described as a black comedy. Cromer's version plunges headfirst into the blackness, leaving the comedy to sink or swim.
Mostly, I'm afraid, it sinks.

http://www.newsok.com/bc-house-theater-review-art-nyt/article/feed/253063
Updated On: 4/25/11 at 08:34 PM

[ljay889]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:36pm

Rave for Falco.

[PurpleFanta]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:38pm

I really agree with Brantley. When I saw the show I was very underwhelmed, but thankfully Falco gave an unbelievable performance.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:44pm

What a dull production. Thank God for Edie Falco. This is a disaster.

[wickedfan]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:49pm

It seems that Cromer should stick to dramas. Let me rephrase, plays that were written AS dramas.

[singtopher]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 8:50pm

The best parts of the show were Falco and the nuns.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 9:03pm

Honestly, I thought the nuns got old after 3 minutes. And I honestly wonder if Edie only seemed excellent by comparison. I did enjoy her, but I thought everything else was awful. Jennifer Jason Leigh gave one of the worst performances I think I have ever seen.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 9:06pm

amNY is negative with nice words for Falco (2.5 stars):

"Although Guare’s play remains quite funny, Cromer downplays most of its humor to ill effect. His greatest stamp on the production is to set the stage at a sharp center angle, allowing the characters to move forward and directly address the audience during their monologues.

Stiller gives a surprisingly flat performance that stresses only Artie’s anger and frustration. Leigh is miscast and totally unfunny as Bunny, lacking the character’s aggressive and over-the-top qualities.

Luckily, Falco delivers a moving performance, capturing Banana’s paranoia over being sent away to a mental asylum or being force-fed pills."

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/theater-review-the-house-of-blue-leaves-2-5-stars-1.2838383

[Tom-497]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 9:22pm

Newsday is positive. I haven't linked it because I think it's a pay site now.

"Anyone overly attached to the zaniness of the different, but comparably terrific 1986 revival starring Swoosie Kurtz and Stockard Channing may be surprised, even dismayed, by the dark, heavily textured clouds hovering over the dead-end apartment in Queens (designed by Scott Pask)....

But Cromer underplays the cuteness of the grotesquery. Instead, he digs deeper for the kind of laughs that also hurt in a play that, for all its generosity and humor, is lush with sad wisdom about fame, love and mass uprisings of deluded values."

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 9:56pm

Hollywood Reporter is mixed to negative with a pan for Leigh:

"Guare’s play maintains a delicate equilibrium between zaniness and gravity. The agita of characters seeking a miraculous transformation in their lives is played against the black comedy of their clumsy desperation. As he showed in his textured productions of Our Town and Brighton Beach Memoirs, Cromer specializes in excavating the gritty emotional realism beneath the theatrical surface. But he mines pathos at the expense of the play’s life-giving humor, particularly in the ponderous first act.

The casting of Leigh is problematic. Bunny is an abrasive character, but in Leigh’s croaky performance, she’s merely obnoxious. While her blind faith in Artie’s negligible songwriting talent is clearly a force in their relationship, there’s zero warmth in this woman. That makes it hard to care for Artie as he prepares to ditch Bananas for the insensitive harpy downstairs."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/house-blue-leaves-theater-review-181866

[Natey2]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 10:07pm

Edie Falco was awesome!! Stiller rocked too. Here's a recap I wrote up for The Apiary. Anna Wintour was sitting right behind me, randomly enough.

http://www.theapiary.org/the-apiary/2011/4/22/the-house-of-blue-leaves-the-walter-kerr-theatre-41311.html

[Tom-497]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 10:24pm

The Wall Street Journal is a rave -- "the best show of the season."

Fortunately, David Cromer has cracked Mr. Guare's complex code with the effortless understanding that he brings to every show he stages. The result is a production in which three big names—Ben Stiller, Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh—are presented not as flop insurance but as artists, and in which full justice is done to one of the best American plays of the 20th century."
WSJ

[Tom-497]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 10:54pm

Variety is extremely positive. I don't have a link.

"The year is 1965 and America is looking for miracles in Cromer's transporting revival of "The House of Blue Leaves," John Guare's insanely funny comedy about the impact of a historic Papal visit on a troubled Queens household. Topliners Ben Stiller, Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh should get more bottoms on seats; but the starry casting was no desperation measure. Guare's iconic play not only holds up, it still sets the bar for smart comic lunacy...."

"It takes some kind of genius to find the humor in a suffering schizophrenic like Bananas.... But Falco is that kind of genius."

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 11:06pm

Best pull-quote so far:
"Topliners Stiller, Falco and Jason Leigh should get more bottoms...."

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/25/11 at 11:09pm

Theatremania is mixed:

"Cromer does well in plumbing the fathomless dark that Guare sees engulfing his characters, and gets exemplary work from his supporting players in the process. But he notably misfires with Leigh and Stiller. Leigh looks right in the gaudy dresses Greenwood picked and the sorry black coif wigmaker Watson rightly arranged; but her Bunny Flingus is like something from a burlesque turn. She mines all the cliches of an ambitious floozy, yet never digs deeper.

More disappointingly, Stiller -- who played Ronnie in the play' s1986 Lincoln Center revival and whose mother, Anne Meara, was the original production's Bunny -- come up empty-handed where Artie is concerned. He gives a non-performance performance as Artie -- one that goes wrong immediately with Cromer's awkward staging of the opening sequence where Artie is singing his lame ditties before an inattentive nightclub crowd."

http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/reviews/04-2011/the-house-of-blue-leaves_36543.html

[uncageg]

Posted: 4/26/11 at 12:53am

I agree with Bloomberg and the NY Post about Stiller. For me he was the weakest member of the cast. Leigh and Falco, in my opinion, were wonderful.

[littlepaperstars]

Posted: 4/26/11 at 3:03am

I really enjoyed Leigh and disliked Falco (though I'm generally not her biggest fan...) and I liked him but I expected the pans for Stiller...

Too bad, it's a gorgeous set and I loved the material.

[uncageg]

Posted: 4/26/11 at 10:32am

The set is great and I was sitting front orchestra so the ending was pretting cool from where I was sitting.

[After Eight]

Posted: 5/1/11 at 12:59am

Has there ever been a play as bad as this that has received as much praise as this one has from the first down through the years? The play is flat out horrible. It was horrible when it first opened, and has remained horrible in every production since. The play appears now more horrible than ever in this new production that is itself horrible. But even if the production were wonderful, the play would remain what it is: horrible.