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The House of Blue Leaves

The House of Blue Leaves
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: John Guare
Publisher: Samuel French (cover image may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 79
Pub. Date: 1971
Edition: Revised
ISBN-10: 0573610282
ISBN-13: 9780573610288
Cast Size: 6 female, 4 male

About the Play:

The House of Blue Leaves has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.

The House of Blue Leaves is a full-length dramatic comedy by John Guare. On the day that the Pope visits New York and masses of people line the streets in adulation, Artie, a zookeeper living in Sunnyside, Queens, thinks its time for his life to be blessed, too. He desperately wants to escape his lower middle-class existence and become a popular singer and songwriter, but his life is complicated by an ambitious mistress, a crazy wife and a bomb-making son.

The House of Blue Leaves is set in 1965, on the day Pope Paul VI visited New York City to plead for an end to the Vietnam War. Zookeeper Artie Shaugnessy is aspiring songwriter whose enthusiasm far outdistances his talent. He plans to relocate to L.A. and call upon a movie-producer friend to help launch his showbiz career. Tagging along on Artie's coattails is his opportunistic downstairs mistress, Bunny, who will do anything to get what she wants, including helping Artie banish his mentally unbalanced wife, Bananas, to the funny farm. Meanwhile, Artie's embittered GI son Ronnie goes AWOL from Fort Dix stowing a home made-bomb intended to blow up the Pope in Yankee Stadium. Also arriving are Artie's old school chum, now a successful Hollywood producer, Billy Einhorn with starlet girlfriend in tow, who holds the key to Artie's dreams of getting out of Queens and away from the life he so despises. But like many dreams, this promise of glory evaporates amid the chaos of ordinary lives. The House of Blue Leaves is a heartbreakingly human comedy with very unique characters that has a tour de force monologue for a 20-something male actor. Given by the character Ronnie Shaughnessy, the monologue is about him wanting to be a bride. It expresses his yearning for love and to be special, to have all eyes on him. It's hilarious and surprisingly touching.

The House of Blue Leaves was first staged in 1966 at the Eugene O'Neil Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. It premiered Off-Broadway in 1971 at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre, and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play and the Obie Award for Best American Play. It was revived in 1986, both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, and was again revived on Broadway in 2011. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 6 female, 4 male

What people say:

"A brilliant play ... beautifully fashioned ... Wacky and sometimes sad [with]... combined hilarity, poignancy, outrageous stage aside and tragedy." — New York Daily News

"Enchantingly zany and original farce." — New York Times

"This compelling 1971 tragicomedy remains the finest accomplishment from playwright John Guare.... This alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching work powerfully explores the crass values that sometimes shape our hopes and dreams, and the futility of trying to fulfill them." — Backstage

"Guare's story tackles the thorny issues of vanity, ego self-deception, celebrity glorification and other personal and societal dysfunctions. Along the way, Guare steers us from sitcomland to Pinteresque bleakness, slapstick and farce…." — The Orange County Register

About the Playwright:

John Guare is an American playwright. He received the Obie, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Tony nominations for The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, which also won the Olivier Award for Best Play. He won a Tony for his libretto to Two Gentlemen of Verona, which also won the Tony as Best Musical of 1972. His screenplay for Louis Malle's Atlantic City earned him an Oscar nomination.

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