Event

The House of Blue Leaves

A Catalina Players Production

The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare
Directed by Leslie J Miller

A late middle-aged zoo attendant still has lingering visions of being a songwriter, and these hopes are buoyed by his mistress who lives downstairs. On the day the Pope is making his first visit to New York, the mistress talks him into calling his old school chum, now a big Hollywood producer, for a job writing music for films. At the same time his son comes home AWOL from Fort Dix carrying a bomb with which he intends to blow up the Pope in Yankee Stadium. The songwriter has meantime called for the jiffy wagon to come and take away his cuckoo wife (her name is Bananas). The big time producer arrives shortly after his fiancee, who has broken her hearing aid, and at about the same time that three sightseeing nuns drop in from the roof. The son's bomb goes off prematurely, killing a bunch of these characters, and the producer ends by eloping to Australia with the songwriter's mistress. We are back at the beginning, with the frustrated songwriter and his nutty wife. Winner of the 1971 Critics Award and the Obie Award as Best American Play, House of Blue Leaves was recently revived on Broadway. "A brilliant play... beautifully fashioned.... Wacky and sometimes sad [with]... combined hilarity, poignancy, outrageous stage aside and tragedy." N.Y. Daily News. "Enchantingly zany and original farce." N.Y. Times.