'Blue Leaves' looks at fascination with fame
As celebrity sound bites dominate the airwaves and those oft-referenced 15 minutes of fame flicker and fade for countless individuals, Glen Ellyn's Village Theatre Guild takes audiences back to the 1960s for a comedic look at the public's fascination with fame in "The House of Blue Leaves."
The theater company presents the John Guare farce - written in the '60s and set in Sunnyside, N.Y., on Oct. 4, 1965, the day Pope Paul VI visited the city - in the guild's intimate, 60-seat theater space for the next four weekends.
"It's a comedy, but it's a black comedy," said director Marge Uhlarik-Boller, adding that the show also features a "delicate poignancy."
"It's just a really remarkable piece of work," she said. "There are lots of laughs and some tears. I think it is very poignant. It absolutely gets me."
The story centers on Artie, a zookeeper who aspires to songwriting fame, and his girlfriend, Bunny.
"She's very involved in the concept of being famous," said Uhlarik-Boller. "He's also married. His wife is a schizophrenic who is actually the only person who tells the truth all the time."
Artie's wife, nicknamed Bananas, is well aware of her husband's extracurricular relationship.
"The first act is those three characters," said Linda Timpa, who plays Bananas, opposite her real-life husband Lars Timpa's characterization of Artie. "It's an odd show. - If we do it correctly, people are going to cry and they're going to laugh."
The Timpas, who live in Wood Dale, have appeared on stage together numerous times, she said.
"The other times we've played married couples, they were a lot more happily married than this couple is," she said.
In fact, she and Lars Timpa met through their involvement in community theater. They married nine years ago; he's played her uncle, her father, her nephew and her brother-in-law.
"It's a wonderful support system. We can actually, in our day-to-day lives, discuss the show and work on the characters' relationship," she said. "Not to brag, but my husband is a wonderful actor."
Uhlarik-Boller has been directing plays in Chicago and the suburbs for 28 years and has been an actress for even longer. She said this show, which opened in 1971 in an off-Broadway production and was revived on Broadway in 1986 with John Mahoney and Swoozie Kurtz, is one that actors and directors know and revere.
"It's a sort of classic among the theater folk," she said.
Uhlarik-Boller offers a historical tidbit: another of the play's characters, Ronnie, has been played by Ben Stiller.
"Ben Stiller made his stage debut in this in 1986," she said.
Uhlarik-Boller, a drama and middle school English teacher at DaVinci Academy in Elgin, said "Blue Leaves" is her third directorial effort with Village Theatre Guild.
"They're a great group because they do kind of edgier theater," she said.
<p class="factboxheadblack">If you go</p> <p class="News"><b>What:</b> John Guare's "The House of Blue Leaves," staged by Glen Ellyn's Village Theatre Guild</p> <p class="News"><b>When:</b> 8 p.m. Jan. 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, 31 and Feb. 6 and 7; 4 p.m. Jan. 25 and Feb. 1</p> <p class="News"><b>Where:</b> Village Theatre Guild Theater, northwest corner of Park Boulevard and Butterfield Road, Glen Ellyn</p> <p class="News"><b>Tickets:</b> $18</p> <p class="News"><b>Info:</b> (630) 469-8230 or <a href="http://www.villagetheatreguild.org" target="new">villagetheatreguild.org</a></p>