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The House of Blue Leaves
This poignant Obie Award-winning comedy unfolds in New York City on the day the Pope is expected to visit. Hearts are palpitating in the sleepy borough of Queens, but not entirely on account of His Holiness. Bunny Flingus, a femme-fatale from Flushing (or thereabouts) is stirring things up in the quiet, unfulfilled life of aspiring songwriter Artie Shaughnessy. Artie longs to leave his unhappy marriage, elope with Bunny, and write a hit song that will top the charts.
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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December 28, 2018
John Guare’s Obie Award-winning play has more in common with Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh than any comedy should — even a black comedy. Zookeeper Arnie Shaughnessy has been nurturing a dream of becoming a Hollywood composer for decades. But, despite having a boyhood friend who’s now a renowned Hollywood producer, Arnie’s stuck in Queens with his schizophrenic wife, whom he’d like to institutionalize so he can marry his extremely pushy girlfriend. The ending will come as a great surprise. But too much of the play is so over the top as to be not funny, just eye-rolling clichés.
February 4, 2020
A number of years ago, just after 9/11, a terrible aeronautic tragedy took place. A jetliner filled to capacity with Dominican people crashed near JFK airport in an outlying neighborhood of Queens, New York. Airplane debris smoldered on streets, and peoples' homes were immolated and smashed. Such accidents occasionally occur near airports across the metro area. They are not metaphors, but tragedies.
In "The House of Blue Leaves" the American dream crashes into the Queens neighborhood of Artie Shaughnessy, a luckless and desperate song-writer and zoo-keeper. Like the airliners that sometimes miss runways at adjacent airports, "The Dream" leaves many injured and few survivors.
Artie has been victimized by the stochastic and brutal power of luck that, like an inverted tornado, lifts some individuals to lofty heights of honor and wealth and leaves others flat and desolate. In this instance, Fate has plucked Arnie's childhood friend, Billy Einhorn, out of obscurity while leaving Artie in the wallow of a lower-middle class Queens apartment with a depressed and erratic wife, a demented son, and a deskful of corny, tinny songs.
The American Dream is so close to Artie that it shadows and torments him. It is like a life-long hangover he cannot shake or cure. He waits for its fulfillment like he waits for the animals in his zoo to finally give birth. When curtain opens on the "The House of Blue Leaves" the animal births, like the realization of Artie's dream, are in precarious balance.
An aura of imminence and excruciating anticipation surrounds "The House of Blue Leaves." It is the same quotidian suspense in which we all live--will our precious, little plans go well or awry? This exquisite sensation pumps from the heart of Henry James's novella "The Beast in the Jungle", that destiny awaits us like a splendid and dangerous beast, just beyond our view.
This sense of imminence in "The House of Blue Leaves" comes from external events that are historic, even mythic, in scope, yet as distant from the fates of these characters as a black hole swallowing a distant star. This is 1964 and the pope is coming to Queens. Bunny Flingus, the muse of Artie's declining middle age, is so thrilled that she is going out to meet His Holiness at 5:15 AM. Bunny is the huckster, the beater of drums, the woman who believes in luck and Hope and dreams even though she has been fired a hundred times. Bunny's imagination is so kinetic, so exciting, yet unreliable that she believes, like Ion in Plato's dialogue, that she understands medicine because she worked in a doctor's office.
When such major events come to such mundane places like Queens, the displacement is enormous, the voltage intense and dangerous. Miracles, meteor showers, and divine intervention are potential. Bunny is the medium for these hopes. She will stand along the path the pope will take and be blessed by him, then transfer this blessing to Artie. Artie is skeptical, not because he is smart, but because he feels doomed. Nothing can help him.
Even so, his passive melancholy is no match for Bunny's enthusiasm. When he learns that Billy, his famous friend, is coming east to research his next motion picture, Bunny convinces Artie to phone him and ask for his help. Artie phones Billy on his jet and the mogul agrees to pay a visit. Suddenly, all of the dreams are dusted off like old sheet music and Artie's future is back in business.
But then Ronnie, Artie's disturbed son shows up, AWOL from the army. He is a commando on a mission to destroy the American Dream. Unlike Artie, Ronnie's dream suffered irreparable damage at a tender age. His self-esteem was aborted early enough for a dark personality to grow over it. In a brilliant, two minute monologue, Ronnie reveals how he auditioned for Billy when he was a child and how this pivotal event destroyed his life. In one of the funniest, most painful moments in theater, Ronnie suggests with insane clarity and eloquent hyperbole how the American dream explodes.
Three nuns also show up. They, too, have come to participate in the pope's historic visit by viewing the event from the roof of Artie's building. They are unquestioning believers whose frustrations express themselves in so many tics and preoccupations. They, too, seem to need a miracle, some excitement,a touch of glamor, or at least a pep rally. They climb into the Shaughnessy apartment to avoid the cold. The nuns are comical figures of deprivation. The youngest nun consumes a jar of peanut butter as though it were an inexpressibly delicious alien food. The older two nuns are downtrodden but full of whacky enthusiasm and petty rivalry.
In the secular world, there is no figure with more power to bestow boons than a Hollywood mogul. He is a pagan hybrid of pope and oracle, with intimate knowledge of the holy mysteries of success. But Billy has no intention of soiling his shoes on Artie's abject floorboards. He sends his fiance, Corinna Stroller, a movie star, as his emissary to Chez Shaughnessy. Corinna smiles and understands nothing. She reveals to the audience that she is deaf from an accident on the set of one of Billy's films. How apt it is that a Hollywood producer's consort is unable to hear him. Deafness might be the only protection against the hype.
But even for the high and mighty there are scores to settle. As Corinna Stroller exits with the nuns, Ronnie gives her a gift for Billy. It will never reach its target. Only grief and remorse bring Billy to Artie's house. Bunny finally cooks--this is her special sexual allure--and the fates of the characters are set. Billy will return to Hollywood to make pictures that Artie and all of the "little people" will pay to see. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the U.S. of A.
No one emerges from the events of "The House of Blue Leaves" better than when they came in, or even wiser. If redemption and a happy ending are what you came for, you may want to send the playwright an angry letter. What this play demonstrates more trenchantly than any other is how powerfully the culture of celebrity has pervaded American life, and how awful it feels to be a "nobody." Contrast this with the Walker Percy novel "The Movie Goer", where the protagonist walks around in post-cinematic daze, wishing life would have the special quality of a movie. Eventually he snaps out of it and sees the possibilities around him. In "The House of Blue Leaves" the animals in the zoo all give birth, but there are no other possibilities for Artie and his family of losers. Bunny Flingus cashes in her culinary chips by getting hired to cook for Billy, the Hollywood mogul. That is "as good as it gets" for these forsaken characters.
The genius of "The House of Blue Leaves" is in how it acknowledges, celebrates and repudiates such a sacred tenet of American life, "the divinity of success," while never forgetting to laugh about it. This could have been "Death of a Salesman" but John Guare was having too much fun laughing at destiny and pricking these dreams, which like balloons, are empty in the middle. If life is cruel, comedy is crueler. "The House of Blue Leaves" integrates the grit of realism with a zany nihilism. Beneath the wasted lives and devastated psyches of a fairly squalid domestic scene is the cosmic laughter of the absurdist, who is unafraid to expose and explode life as it is really lived.
In "The House of Blue Leaves" the American dream crashes into the Queens neighborhood of Artie Shaughnessy, a luckless and desperate song-writer and zoo-keeper. Like the airliners that sometimes miss runways at adjacent airports, "The Dream" leaves many injured and few survivors.
Artie has been victimized by the stochastic and brutal power of luck that, like an inverted tornado, lifts some individuals to lofty heights of honor and wealth and leaves others flat and desolate. In this instance, Fate has plucked Arnie's childhood friend, Billy Einhorn, out of obscurity while leaving Artie in the wallow of a lower-middle class Queens apartment with a depressed and erratic wife, a demented son, and a deskful of corny, tinny songs.
The American Dream is so close to Artie that it shadows and torments him. It is like a life-long hangover he cannot shake or cure. He waits for its fulfillment like he waits for the animals in his zoo to finally give birth. When curtain opens on the "The House of Blue Leaves" the animal births, like the realization of Artie's dream, are in precarious balance.
An aura of imminence and excruciating anticipation surrounds "The House of Blue Leaves." It is the same quotidian suspense in which we all live--will our precious, little plans go well or awry? This exquisite sensation pumps from the heart of Henry James's novella "The Beast in the Jungle", that destiny awaits us like a splendid and dangerous beast, just beyond our view.
This sense of imminence in "The House of Blue Leaves" comes from external events that are historic, even mythic, in scope, yet as distant from the fates of these characters as a black hole swallowing a distant star. This is 1964 and the pope is coming to Queens. Bunny Flingus, the muse of Artie's declining middle age, is so thrilled that she is going out to meet His Holiness at 5:15 AM. Bunny is the huckster, the beater of drums, the woman who believes in luck and Hope and dreams even though she has been fired a hundred times. Bunny's imagination is so kinetic, so exciting, yet unreliable that she believes, like Ion in Plato's dialogue, that she understands medicine because she worked in a doctor's office.
When such major events come to such mundane places like Queens, the displacement is enormous, the voltage intense and dangerous. Miracles, meteor showers, and divine intervention are potential. Bunny is the medium for these hopes. She will stand along the path the pope will take and be blessed by him, then transfer this blessing to Artie. Artie is skeptical, not because he is smart, but because he feels doomed. Nothing can help him.
Even so, his passive melancholy is no match for Bunny's enthusiasm. When he learns that Billy, his famous friend, is coming east to research his next motion picture, Bunny convinces Artie to phone him and ask for his help. Artie phones Billy on his jet and the mogul agrees to pay a visit. Suddenly, all of the dreams are dusted off like old sheet music and Artie's future is back in business.
But then Ronnie, Artie's disturbed son shows up, AWOL from the army. He is a commando on a mission to destroy the American Dream. Unlike Artie, Ronnie's dream suffered irreparable damage at a tender age. His self-esteem was aborted early enough for a dark personality to grow over it. In a brilliant, two minute monologue, Ronnie reveals how he auditioned for Billy when he was a child and how this pivotal event destroyed his life. In one of the funniest, most painful moments in theater, Ronnie suggests with insane clarity and eloquent hyperbole how the American dream explodes.
Three nuns also show up. They, too, have come to participate in the pope's historic visit by viewing the event from the roof of Artie's building. They are unquestioning believers whose frustrations express themselves in so many tics and preoccupations. They, too, seem to need a miracle, some excitement,a touch of glamor, or at least a pep rally. They climb into the Shaughnessy apartment to avoid the cold. The nuns are comical figures of deprivation. The youngest nun consumes a jar of peanut butter as though it were an inexpressibly delicious alien food. The older two nuns are downtrodden but full of whacky enthusiasm and petty rivalry.
In the secular world, there is no figure with more power to bestow boons than a Hollywood mogul. He is a pagan hybrid of pope and oracle, with intimate knowledge of the holy mysteries of success. But Billy has no intention of soiling his shoes on Artie's abject floorboards. He sends his fiance, Corinna Stroller, a movie star, as his emissary to Chez Shaughnessy. Corinna smiles and understands nothing. She reveals to the audience that she is deaf from an accident on the set of one of Billy's films. How apt it is that a Hollywood producer's consort is unable to hear him. Deafness might be the only protection against the hype.
But even for the high and mighty there are scores to settle. As Corinna Stroller exits with the nuns, Ronnie gives her a gift for Billy. It will never reach its target. Only grief and remorse bring Billy to Artie's house. Bunny finally cooks--this is her special sexual allure--and the fates of the characters are set. Billy will return to Hollywood to make pictures that Artie and all of the "little people" will pay to see. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the U.S. of A.
No one emerges from the events of "The House of Blue Leaves" better than when they came in, or even wiser. If redemption and a happy ending are what you came for, you may want to send the playwright an angry letter. What this play demonstrates more trenchantly than any other is how powerfully the culture of celebrity has pervaded American life, and how awful it feels to be a "nobody." Contrast this with the Walker Percy novel "The Movie Goer", where the protagonist walks around in post-cinematic daze, wishing life would have the special quality of a movie. Eventually he snaps out of it and sees the possibilities around him. In "The House of Blue Leaves" the animals in the zoo all give birth, but there are no other possibilities for Artie and his family of losers. Bunny Flingus cashes in her culinary chips by getting hired to cook for Billy, the Hollywood mogul. That is "as good as it gets" for these forsaken characters.
The genius of "The House of Blue Leaves" is in how it acknowledges, celebrates and repudiates such a sacred tenet of American life, "the divinity of success," while never forgetting to laugh about it. This could have been "Death of a Salesman" but John Guare was having too much fun laughing at destiny and pricking these dreams, which like balloons, are empty in the middle. If life is cruel, comedy is crueler. "The House of Blue Leaves" integrates the grit of realism with a zany nihilism. Beneath the wasted lives and devastated psyches of a fairly squalid domestic scene is the cosmic laughter of the absurdist, who is unafraid to expose and explode life as it is really lived.
November 2, 2022
The sad absurdity of people’s dreams of Church and Hollywood.
September 12, 2016
This book is different from the types of books that I usually read. It was just so interesting. I loved how the backgrounds of the characters were revealed one by one and the connection with the title. It is a pretty dark play, but it's definitely worth reading.
February 8, 2024
Moral of the story is that plays are super easy to read and will def be helping me achieve my goodreads goal.
But right into it. This play was fine… it’s interesting, I think because young people are so obsessed with “the 60s” aesthetically, you get the sense that it’s the recent past. But reading this play I really had a sense of how long ago it was and how far we’ve come, even just in little bits of dialogue here and there. Not in a positive or negative way, but just like wow, this feels dated. I didn’t feel like the play really resonated with me on an emotional level though, it was entertaining but I don’t think it will stick. Nothing seemed to really have a point and I didn’t love the ending
But right into it. This play was fine… it’s interesting, I think because young people are so obsessed with “the 60s” aesthetically, you get the sense that it’s the recent past. But reading this play I really had a sense of how long ago it was and how far we’ve come, even just in little bits of dialogue here and there. Not in a positive or negative way, but just like wow, this feels dated. I didn’t feel like the play really resonated with me on an emotional level though, it was entertaining but I don’t think it will stick. Nothing seemed to really have a point and I didn’t love the ending
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November 22, 2022I basically read this. Okay I only read the first 80 pages and the last 20 I basically wasn’t paying attention but it counts god dammit. It has to count! How else am I supposed to complete my reading challenge of the year? I won’t have this taken away from me! And I ain’t ever going to apologize for that! I. MUST. FINISH. THE READING. LIST! What am I without that goal? A bunch of nothing, a bunch of fuckin nothin man.
Anyway people got real silly in the 70’s
This play was written by someone who went to Yale.
Anyway people got real silly in the 70’s
This play was written by someone who went to Yale.
December 12, 2024
What did I just listen to
October 17, 2025
Well,I don’t think I connected with this work at all. I don’t really have anything bad to say, I just wasn’t grabbed by it at all.
January 9, 2009
I was in a production of House of Blue Leaves where I played Bananas. It was the last production I did before I was diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes I think of the two things together. Bananas, however, was never really heard whereas I was finally heard after being ill for years. The play can be goofy, poignant, frustrating and just sad. Bananas wasn't really crazy, she just wanted to pull everyone together to a time where life and home were right, where everything made sense. What looked like crazy was simply the end of her rope. I think that everyone in the play was most likely at the end of their ropes just trying to solve the monatany of a crippling life. I think because I identified with her so much, me being at the end of my rope as well, that it was the best performance I've had yet. Both Bananas and I are in better places. If you can see a good production of it I would recommend seeing it first and then reading it. (Unless you work better the other way round!)
January 29, 2008
This is one of my favorite plays. It is funny, but also pretty depressingly sad. It's often described as 'dark comedy' but I think I found a sadness in it beyond the bits that are meant to be darkly funny. Bananas is a truly saddening character, and the fact at the audience is made to love her more than any of her family appear to really tugs at you, even when you're laughing over some onstage antics. This is an excellent play to read, but if you have the chance to see a production I highly recommend you do so. I've seen a few and even the crappiest really had a shine to it that I think is there, in the script, and would take more than a bad production to tarnish.
June 28, 2013
In one of my other lives I was in this play as an actor. I played the role of Bananas, the crazy wife, which I took to be John Guare's take on Mrs. Rochester in the attic. Of course, I loved the play. It is such a New York City play. In some ways the culture and flavor of the city are just as much characters as the people. I won't give away the plot but it involves a Hollywood Starlet, the Pope and a possible bomb plot as well as Artie's desire to have a love life and take care of his crazy wife. Oh, and it's funny! John Guare is a wonderful playwright and if you haven't read or seen this play, you'll love it.
September 1, 2010
I like this play. It's odd and sad and funny. another one of my "weird and beautiful" selections, I suppose. It's a little hard to just read, though. It's one of those plays which is much better on its feet and being performed than it is laying on the page.
Unlike most of the other scripts on my Goodreads account, I have never been a part of a production of this. I've seen it and I've had a couple of girlfriends who have played Bananas, but not me. Maybe someday.
Unlike most of the other scripts on my Goodreads account, I have never been a part of a production of this. I've seen it and I've had a couple of girlfriends who have played Bananas, but not me. Maybe someday.
July 24, 2012
Interesting. Kind of obscene, which I normally like, but this time it felt very upsetting. Didn't care much for the ending, though it made me laugh throughout. I read this from the perspective of a community theater company looking for plays to put on, and I felt its portrayal of mental illness wouldn't go over well.
April 2, 2014
I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I hadn't read this play, even while a theatre major in college. Though it is over forty years old, it is still relevant : The American obsession with fame is even more out of control today than it was when this play was first staged. It is a great script with well-drawn characters. I'm sorry I waited so long to read it.
January 15, 2010
I was in a production of House of Blue Leaves in college (around 1990, I think). I played one of the nuns. Our guest artist for that semester was David Lander (Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley), who played the lead. What a great experience. I really love this play.
March 1, 2017
I read this as I was revising my play from last year and I found a lot of similarities: farcical tone, monologuing, lust for some sort of fame, and from a review of the 85 production a comparison to DAY OF THE LOCUST. Really well done and fun to read.
February 7, 2016
The story pits two women -- one insane, the other a sexpot who refuses to cook for the man she loves until after they're married -- against each other for the love of a man you wouldn't ordinarily fight over. Includes some really lame musical numbers, too.
June 29, 2017
That was a heavy one and I was waiting to be really really scarred but I was only sometimes really scarred. But beyond that, it was the most unique book and I enjoyed the process, but that's what it was , a process
June 29, 2007
one of absolute favorite plays. unusual and layered characters.
September 15, 2007
probably my favorite play. john guare is a master of crazy. but in all that craziness humanity manages to seep through. and it's painful and beautiful all at once.
June 23, 2008
You should know that I'm afraid of nuns and I still love this play. The chaos of it is part of what makes it so much fun, and the characters are really interesting.
January 9, 2008
I designed the costumes for our sarah lawrence production. twas awsome.
January 21, 2013
In a production of this right now - funny but really sad. I like the theme of celebrity that Guare is clearly focused on. Very relevant.
November 19, 2018
Kind of crazy, kind of funny, really dark
November 19, 2025
I just finished John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, and my first thought is that this is a tragedy disguised as a comedy. The play centers on Artie Shaughnessy, a zookeeper and aspiring songwriter stuck in a drab Queens apartment with his mentally unwell wife, Bananas. As the Pope’s 1965 visit sends their neighborhood into a frenzy, Artie plots his escape with his relentlessly optimistic mistress, Bunny, pinning all his hopes on a life-changing meeting with his childhood friend, now a Hollywood mogul. The setup promises a farce, but the story reveals itself to cover a lot of complex and emotional concepts.
I'll admit, the play's energy is relentless and occasionally borders on chaotic. I think this play could have benefitted from being a little longer, which is not the way I usually feel. I do think that the chaos helps the emotional punches land more brutally. The characters are all shouting their desires into a void -whether it’s Artie with his terrible songs, Bunny with her schemes, or their son Ronnie with his deranged plot to bomb the Pope. Bananas (the wife everyone writes off as insane) starts as a cringy joke but ends up seeming more like a Cassandra-type. She’s brutally attuned to the disappointments everyone else is scrambling to escape; so heartbroken by the world’s cruelty that she’s retreated into a childlike state. As I realized this depth, it made me appreciate how the friction between their loud ambitions and her quiet despair was so well-utilized as a narrative tool.
My takeaway is that this is an excavation of the quiet devastation of accepting a mundane life. I am not sure about the jarring ending and need to process it for a bit. But I think you’ll likely appreciate this play if you’ve ever found yourself wondering about what quiet tragedies might be playing out, down the street at the neighbor's house.
I'll admit, the play's energy is relentless and occasionally borders on chaotic. I think this play could have benefitted from being a little longer, which is not the way I usually feel. I do think that the chaos helps the emotional punches land more brutally. The characters are all shouting their desires into a void -whether it’s Artie with his terrible songs, Bunny with her schemes, or their son Ronnie with his deranged plot to bomb the Pope. Bananas (the wife everyone writes off as insane) starts as a cringy joke but ends up seeming more like a Cassandra-type. She’s brutally attuned to the disappointments everyone else is scrambling to escape; so heartbroken by the world’s cruelty that she’s retreated into a childlike state. As I realized this depth, it made me appreciate how the friction between their loud ambitions and her quiet despair was so well-utilized as a narrative tool.
My takeaway is that this is an excavation of the quiet devastation of accepting a mundane life. I am not sure about the jarring ending and need to process it for a bit. But I think you’ll likely appreciate this play if you’ve ever found yourself wondering about what quiet tragedies might be playing out, down the street at the neighbor's house.
July 24, 2021
It is thought provoking. This thing is all over the place. Guy marries and creates a family with a mentally challenged woman. As the years progress she starts to deteriorate mentally. They have a son, who grows up to go AWOL from basic training to attempt to assassinate the Pope. It gets weird and weirder. It is so darkly hilarious, I'm talking like straight no chaser sardonic satire. I wish more people would read this because it could jump start some necessary conversations about mental health and the stigma surrounding it. It's brilliantly ironic how the only person being honest about their needs and voicing them succinctly is viewed as somehow diminished. Hospitalization is the antithesis of those desires but when this play ended
December 26, 2024
( Format : Audiobook )
"I won't cook for you until after we are married."
Offered as a black comedy, there seemed little in this story that was funny, just desperate and sad, though it could probably be more enjoyable if one is actually present at the performance. Sadly, I felt unable to relate to any of the characters or feel for there desires or expectations - especially Artie's aspirations to become the next Frank Sinatra (after all, we even had to endure his songs at an amateur night in the opening sequences) Despite having a childhood friend who'd made it big in Hollywood, he felt left behind. Yes, the story is uncomfortable, each one of he protagonists is sick in some way major and this reflects around on all of the others, so leading to the unexpected conclusion in this exposure of extended worship both of religion and Hollywood. But it was all too over the top for me.
"I won't cook for you until after we are married."
Offered as a black comedy, there seemed little in this story that was funny, just desperate and sad, though it could probably be more enjoyable if one is actually present at the performance. Sadly, I felt unable to relate to any of the characters or feel for there desires or expectations - especially Artie's aspirations to become the next Frank Sinatra (after all, we even had to endure his songs at an amateur night in the opening sequences) Despite having a childhood friend who'd made it big in Hollywood, he felt left behind. Yes, the story is uncomfortable, each one of he protagonists is sick in some way major and this reflects around on all of the others, so leading to the unexpected conclusion in this exposure of extended worship both of religion and Hollywood. But it was all too over the top for me.
August 8, 2018
I stumbled on this one and decided to read it. I'm not so sure. I'm sure it was amazing when it was first written, but I found it uncomfortable and then the end ....
I'd probably leave this one for that English Lit class
I'd probably leave this one for that English Lit class
November 27, 2025
Funny and heartbreaking story of a man torn between his wife with mental illness and a new femme-fatale. A pretty straight-forward first act gives way to a completely sideways act 2. I would love to see this play performed.
July 25, 2018
Read this first 100 years ago (ok only 45) for an English Lit class. In the context of 1971, I really enjoyed this. Not sure if it survives the test of time.
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