Published on: Wednesday, November 18, 2009

By David Cannon, Sentinel Arts Critic

It may well turn out that playwright John Guare is a one-hit wonder. Admittedly, he had a huge hit with “Six Degrees of Separation,” but that work has obscured all his other efforts.

Fortunately, the Rockville campus of Montgomery College reminds us that Guare did write other plays with a revival of his earlier hit “House of Blue Leaves.” It is probably the best known (or least neglected) work by Guare after “Six Degrees” but, except for the New York setting, the two plays could not be more different. “House of Blue Leaves” is a comedy, although as pitch black a comedy as they come.

The year is 1965 and we begin with Artie Shaunessey, who is having a particularly bad day in Act One. Nothing is going right in his life, including relations with his lover, Bunny. The problem – Artie is currently married to the aptly named Bananas, who has suffered a mental breakdown and has still not recovered. Artie is a zookeeper who dreams of making it big as a songwriter and he gives us a few snippets of his efforts before the play proper starts.

But maybe Artie’s luck is about to change. After calling an old Hollywood friend and the arrival of the Pope Paul VI in New York (to talk to the U.N about the Vietnam War) maybe there are opportunities for him. We almost forget the play started with someone breaking into Artie’s apartment and we later learn the intruder also wants to see the Pope, but for political not religious reasons.

Director Jessica Lefkow could have made this act funnier ,but it has dated. There are some good one-liners, such as when the ever peppy Bunny calls Orion “the Irish constellation,” but Act One is basically a three-person play that has a lot of exposition in it to set up the situation.

That all changes in the second act when half of New York City seems to gather in Artie’s apartment. That includes an actress, a very unhappy soldier and, best of all, three atypical nuns in town to see the Pope. The situation here does get more and more wacky and convoluted to the point that the only way for the play to end is for the story to explode, and it literally does.

Ron Paige does a nice job as our sad sack hero Artie, playing the piano and singing those Tin Pan Alley songs of his. Kimberly Roth’s Bananas and Krista Forney’s Bunny give solid performances as two very off- kiltered women in Artie’s life. Patrick Prebula is good fun as the scheming altar boy Ronnie while Malika Cherifi, Chantelle Stewart, and Julia Friedman as those three nuns have some of the best bits in the second act.

The play is an odd mixture of farce and serious social commentary. Where topics like mental illness, religion, and the political violence of the ‘60s sit side by side with wildly humorous plot developments. The fate of many of these characters is ghastly, darkly comical, and in retrospect, strangely destined to happen. The play is as ruthless a dissection of the so-called American Dream as anything in Arthur Miller, but with a lot more jokes and slapstick thrown in.

Upcoming events at the Montgomery College campus at Rockville include the Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company on Nov. 20 and a holiday show with Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love on Dec.11. Several Saturday Morning Children’s events are on tap, including a TheaterworksUSA production of “Henry and Mudge” on Nov. 28 and In Flight Theater production of “The Snow Queen” on Jan. 23.

For more information, call 240-567-5775 or  visit www.montgomerycollege.edu/PAC.