'Bughouse' Off-Broadway review — enter the mysterious world of artist Henry Darger
Read our review of Bughouse off Broadway, a play about artist Henry Darger, adapted from his writings by Beth Henley and conceived and directed by Martha Clarke.
Summary
- Bughouse is a solo show about the reclusive painter Henry Darger
- Darger's paintings of children and voluminous writings only became famous after his death
- The show has beautiful visuals that capture his art style and troubled mindscape but Darger as a character could be more fleshed out
- The show is recommended for fans of art-inspired theatre (like Sunday in the Park With George or Lempicka) and art fans interested in Darger's work
For decades, the paintings of warring and disemboweled little girls found in a janitor’s apartment awed, confounded, and disgusted art critics, scholars, and onlookers. What could be gleaned from autobiographical and fantastical writings by the reclusive, Chicago-born artist Henry Darger enhanced the intrigue long after his death in 1973. It poses a mammoth task for the 70-minute play Bughouse — conceived and directed by Martha Clarke and adapted by Pulitzer Prize winner Beth Henley from Darger’s writings — to scrape together Darger’s fragmented existence and compulsions. Playing out as a fractured stream of consciousness, Bughouse is a beguiling experiment haunted by its restraint in character study, which doesn't quite go deep enough.
When Darger (John Kelly) takes shape in his cramped apartment, he oscillates between a litany of voices: a scolding adult, incomprehensible mumbles, a high-pitched child. Besides gesturing toward theories of Darger's possible mental illness (and reflecting a testimony by a neighbor that Darger talked to himself), the opening suggests that Kelly might rotate between vocal shifts and characterizations throughout Bughouse. But the production doesn't commit to this creative choice; most “other voices” later enter the show through disembodied recordings of his words or his young characters', some of which Kelly lip-syncs to.
As Darger ruminates on his art and voluminous writings, Kelly plays the man as locked in a limbo of cantankerous moroseness, forever mourning his denied innocence. Sometimes he cracks a mischievous smile or has a glint in his eye when he busies himself on his typewriter. His childhood incarceration at the abusive Asylum for Feeble-Minded, the loss of his mother, and the adoption of his baby sister make up a lifetime leitmotif of anguish. Kelly carries weight like a man who has hauled planets on his back, conveying how Darger’s work was a conduit for Catholic guilt, his fixation on a 4-year-old murder victim, his protectiveness toward vulnerable children, and his self-mythologizing, making himself a general in his vivid stories.
Buoyed by Arthur Solari’s all-encompassing sound design, Bughouse succeeds in creating a tableau of apparitions. Faye Armon-Troncoso’s set decoration and prop work conjure an untidy study filled with slippery paper. When projections of paintings submerge the apartment, it gracefully merges the naturalistic disarray with Darger’s artistic dreamscape. Darger monologues in the dark recesses of Christopher Akerlind’s somber lighting, and when the script becomes bogged down by wordiness, the visual landscape works to convey the manic palette of inspirations in Darger's mind.
There are scripted segments that more or less parrot facts, known eccentricities (such as his false claim of being born in Brazil), and quotes — sometimes through voiceovers — by and about Darger rather than digging deeper. Bughouse also shies away from meditating on Darger’s more provocative imagery, such as visuals of nude, androgynous girls — the springboard for queer readings of his psyche. The script merely scratches the surface through a quote from one of his unpublished works — “I the writer knows quite a number of boys who would give anything to have been born a girl” — and goes no further.
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.
Bughouse summary
Art curators and scholars have long attempted to decipher Henry Darger (1892-1973), a Chicago-born outsider artist who received posthumous notoriety for his bewildering gallery of vivid paintings and thousands of pages of writing. Bughouse follows Darger in his apartment as he laments his lost news clipping of Elsie Paroubek, a publicized 4-year-old murder victim who became a muse of his now-famous “Vivian girls” paintings. As Darger types his autobiography, he contemplates aloud the trauma and fixations that bleed into his art.
What to expect at Bughouse
Before showtime, simulated wind and rain patter outside the apartment windows of the set, and the storm rumbles once Darger comes into view. Snow powders straight from the ceiling. Yellowed storms from his paintings cloud his apartment.
The projections also show archival street footage as a means to convey his poor background, accompanied by voiceovers. Often, Darger’s Vivian girls peer, giggle, speak from his mirror and windows as animated talking heads (the gorgeous projection design is by John Narun, animation is by Ruth Lingford, and Nieve Sims and Delaney Quinn are credited as actor and voice actor for “Little Girl,” respectively). The play’s use of a mirror suggests that the Vivian girls, both in his paintings and in his over-15,000-page manuscript Realms of the Unreal, may have partially been a psychological endeavor to retrieve his lost sister.
While Bughouse has an estimated 70-minute runtime, the program notes that the exact length is subject to change at each performance as adjustments are made.
What audiences are saying about Bughouse
Audiences have weighed in on Bughouse on various social media platforms, including the Mezzanine app.
- “i had high hopes but neither the writing nor kelly’s performance lived up to them. static where it should have been dynamic, reserved when it should have been explosive…” - Mezzanine user sashur
- “The problem is that it barely engages in Henry Darger’s weird, fascinating art, and is instead about Henry Darger’s tiresome petty grievances… he’s presented as a folk hero. It’s too pat and too easy.” - Mezzanine user Sara Hardwick
- “Though the effects and presentation were incredible and engaging, I felt a separation from Henry Darger’s character that the script and performance could not make up for. But I’m glad I got to see a glimpse inside Henry’s mind and story. After the show, I've got to read more about him.” - My +1 at the show
Who should see Bughouse
- Art aficionados would be interested in a character study of Henry Darger, especially if they have viewed his work in a museum or seen the 2004 documentary In the Realms of the Unreal.
- Bughouse may appeal to fans of plays and musicals about artists, like Sunday in the Park With George or Lempicka.
- Fans of Beth Henley, the playwright of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Crimes of the Heart, might be curious about a departure from her famously Southern oeuvre.
- Fans of Martha Clarke's direction of the dance theatre piece The Garden of Earthly Delights, based on the painting by Hieronymus Bosch, might like to experience her handicraft in another art-inspired production.
Learn more about Bughouse off Broadway
A colorful tableau of a man in mental limbo, Bughouse can be an intriguing illustration, if broad-stroked, of Henry Darger as a tormented, self-mythologizing egotist. But Bughouse yearns for a deeper interrogation into the enigmatic outsider.
Photo credit: Bughouse off Broadway. (Photos by Carol Rosegg)
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