BWW Reviews: THE HOUSE OF YES at GLM

Wendy Macleod's play, The House of Yes puts the funk in dysfunctional, but without the 'n,' if you get my drift.

Under the smart direction of Bill Ware, GLM's production leaves one feeling the need for a long, disinfecting shower.

In this most black of comedies, The Pascals, who stopped living in the real world when John Kennedy was assassinated, are trapped in their dark house on Thanksgiving during a particularly nasty hurricane. Ultimately, the piece is a compulsive ménage of macabre familial campaigning.

It's not my style to present spoilers, so I can't describe much of the plot. I must let it suffice to say that all of the characters in The House of Yes are profoundly screwed up, in the utmost sense of the term. The limited exception is Lesley, the fiancé of Marty, the eldest brother who has been standing in for JFK in his twin sister, Jackie-O's, perpetual reenactments of the moments of and following the assassination. Lesley provides the voice of normalcy and rationality amid a cacophony of unthinkable derangement.

Annikki Cremeans plays Lesley and, as always, she is excellent. Cremeans has been performing since she was a child, and her years on stage have given her a solid, natural presence. Her decades of disciplined experience allow her an artist's freedom, and her nuances are many and fine tuned, fleshing out a character that is our only touchstone to any sense of human decency.

Kate Atack is exquisite as Jackie-O, an admitted psycho who immediately launches into a struggle with Lesley for her twin brother's unqualified devotion. Atack is a gorgeous woman and intelligent, talented actor. She carries herself with grace and is infinitely watchable.

This writer would have run screaming from the theatre at intermission, had she not been there on assignment. Thankfully, the second act does provide helpful exposition that, to a reasonable extent, fills us in and allows us to feel a modicum of empathy for the characters.

In her playwright's notes, Macleod explains, "It is that tension between the Noel Coward veneer and the Pinteresque subtext that makes the play both funny and moving." While I felt a bit more as if the piece was trying to outdo John Guare at being Guare-ish, I see where she was going, and the production manages to be funny and, ultimately, moving, though the audience was left wondering just where they were moved to.

Not for the faint of heart, and definitely not a fun holiday romp, the show plays through next weekend.

Click HERE for tickets and information.

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