The House of Yes

A hurricane rages outside the Washington DC home of the wealthy Pascal family: widowed Mrs Pascal, daughter ‘Jackie-O’ – dangerous when off her medication – and younger son, college drop-out Anthony.  They await the arrival of Marty, Jackie-O’s twin.  Marty is coming home from New York and he’s bringing ‘a friend’.  The friend turns out to be Lesley, a waitress and the only ‘normal’ character.  She and Marty are engaged.  Lesley’s intrusion on this cossetted, insulated family is a catalyst for ‘tragedy’ of a sort.  Jackie-O, so-called because of her obsession with the assassinated president’s wife, wants only to resume her incestuous relationship with her twin brother – the nub of which is re-enactments of the assassination.  The incest seems to be okay by Mrs Pascal as is getting rid of Lesley fast: anything to make Jackie-O happy…

Wendy MacLeod called her play The House of Yes because it’s about ‘people that have never been said no to’. Her 1990 black comedy (adapted for the screen in 1997) is revived by Little Ones Theatre in this production at Theatreworks.  The playwright called it ‘a suburban Jacobean play’. 

‘Suburban’, yes.  ‘Jacobean?  Not so much, although madness, incest and murder are included.   A quick Google trawl reveals that revivals are frequent (the play has had productions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London).  Opinion as to the text’s merit appears to be divided, but most come down on the side of brilliant and funny.  Both these qualities rather escaped me, but it could be this production.  It seems characteristic of Little Ones’ productions, directed by Stephen Nicolazzo, to vitiate the substance of the text and replace it with arbitrary campery and ‘gags’.  Nothing wrong with either per se, but when it feels like just these things, it can be tiresome.

The playwright’s notes on the play include this: ‘It is a great mistake to imagine the play is “camp” because the characters pretend to be Jack and Jackie Kennedy.  To do the play that way is to undermine its emotional truth, and the love, however twisted, between the characters.’ 

Doing the play ‘that way’ has apparently proven irresistible to Mr Nicolazzo.  The production is devoid of emotion, let alone love.  Thus the humour becomes exhausting and one note.  Satirical intentions are blunted by the fact that one has to pay very close attention to grasp that the Pascal family is fabulously rich.  The design by Little Ones regulars Eugyeene Teh and Tessa Leigh Wolfenbuttel doesn’t tell you.  They seem to have spent their budget in the wrong places – such as a neon sign atop a curious proscenium arch in which some action takes place. 

Any reservations, however, are likely to met with that stand-by put-down, ‘But it’s fun!’  Indeed, the Friday night house was almost full and stacked with lovies who shrieked, howled and guffawed in support of those on stage so enthusiastically that the word claque did spring to mind. 

Nevertheless, this is clearly a show that people enjoy.  In its way, it is ‘fun’.  There is some witty dialogue à laNoel Coward or Oscar Wilde, and performances are energetic.  Whether Wendy MacLeod had it in mind that the matriarch Mrs Pascal could be played by an extremely tall, totally bald man (Josh Price), who delivers every already arch line in an eye-rollingly arch manner, I can’t say.  Maybe, but possibly not.  And the point is…?  But clearly Mr Price has his fans. 

Of other cast, Paul Blenheim, as Antony, is consistently good, with a genuinely funny way of throwing his lines away, and Anna McCarthy is touchingly real as someone way out of her depth but staying afloat.  Of course, these two have a slightly easier time of it, as their characters are closest to sane human beings.  Benjamin Rigby as Marty has little to do and does little with it.  Genevieve Giuffre gives it all she’s got and that’s plenty: energy, attack and great comic timing.  I hope to see her in something better soon.    

Why Little Ones have chosen this heightened soap opera with satirical pretensions at this time did not become clear.  I can only think they seized upon it because it presented ‘opportunities’.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Sarah Walker from Sarah Walker Photography