Least Comforting Revival
The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's absurdist black comedy first staged in 1966, is back in a an uneasy, star-filled Broadway revival. Ben Stiller plays Arty Shaughnessy, a wannabe songwriter with a schizophrenic wife named Bananas, a doting girlfriend named Bunny, a bomb-throwing son headed to Vietnam and a houseful of nuns watching the Pope's visit to New York City on TV. Stiller seems both too young and too shrewd for the role, but it's Edie Falco's intense, glassy-eyed (and Tony-nominated) performance as the nutty wife that throws the production off. Still, Guare's play doesn't compromise on its dark vision of American values turned upside down — it's an unsettling evening, and director David Cromer resists the urge to temper it with easy laughs.