Bughouse Off-Broadway Reviews

Bughouse’s use of technology feels more sophisticated and sharper than what you’d see in one of those “immersive Van Gogh” art exhibits. Alongside the projections, Arthur Solari’s sound design and Christopher Akerlund’s lighting effective...

Bughouse’s use of technology feels more sophisticated and sharper than what you’d see in one of those “immersive Van Gogh” art exhibits. Alongside the projections, Arthur Solari’s sound design and Christopher Akerlund’s lighting effectively build a liminal world. But as a theater piece, it’s shockingly inert. Even at barely an hour long, it repeats itself, in a way that I imagine is meant to speak to Darger’s recurring preoccupations but instead feels like a heavy-handed way to zero in on his central traumas.

Clarke’s resulting play, Bughouse, is a visually evocative but dramatically inert performance piece that touches on Darger’s troubled personal story, his penchant for self-isolation, and his fixations on Catholicism and threats to childhood innoc...

Clarke’s resulting play, Bughouse, is a visually evocative but dramatically inert performance piece that touches on Darger’s troubled personal story, his penchant for self-isolation, and his fixations on Catholicism and threats to childhood innocence (which he often depicted with graphic violence and nudity). But the script by Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) consists mostly of an undiagnosed schizophrenic’s stream of consciousness rants, interrupted by the occasional aural hallucination (mostly the voices of nuns and young girls).

Clarke renders Bughouse as a haunting piece about an artist’s ego and thwarted innocence, but the production’s restraint is also its weakness. Even a sturdy Kelly holds back on penetrative inquiries into Darger. The visual and animated designs dr...

Clarke renders Bughouse as a haunting piece about an artist’s ego and thwarted innocence, but the production’s restraint is also its weakness. Even a sturdy Kelly holds back on penetrative inquiries into Darger. The visual and animated designs drench the man’s study in his disheveled mindscape and ineffable awe of his paintings, but the production erects a steely dam behind which its watercolors long to spill out.