Revisiting The House of Yes

There’s black comedy, and then there’s pitch-black comedy. Wendy MacLeod’s 1990 play The House of Yes fits squarely in the second category. How many storytellers, after all, would dare make the assassination of JFK the target of dozens of jokes?

At first glance the plot seems benign enough: A young man named Marty brings his fiancé home for Thanksgiving to meet his family. But trouble kicks in soon enough when it turns out that his mother is bitterly aloof and - better yet - his sister is a mentally unstable Jacqueline Kennedy fanatic who dresses in the former First Lady’s signature pink dress and pillbox hat. Did I mention that Jackie-O, the sister, and Marty dabbled in incest as children?

The House of Yes enjoyed a long run when it opened in San Francisco, and in 1997 it made the leap to the big screen with a hilarious and scathing portrayal of Jackie-O by Parker Posey.

If you need a dose of vitriol to counteract all the holiday mirth that’s about to invade our shopping malls, check out a live performance of The House of Yes by the new Portland production company Fall Guy Theatre. Gay actor Joe Bolenbaugh – who recently appeared in Profile Theatre’s production of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles – founded the company with House of Yes director Willie Smith and two other partners. The show’s stage manager, Michael Rutledge, is also gay.

“At first I dreaded having Thanksgiving in the middle of the run,” Bolenbaugh said, “but then I figured the show is set at Thanksgiving and it would be the perfect time for people to see a dysfunctional family in action and realize, ‘Mine not’s so bad!’”

Bolenbaugh is a district aide at Congressman Earl Blumanauer's Portland headquarters. In the show he plays Marty, the brother for whom Jackie-O has the hots. Rather than replicate the campy qualities of the film, he said, “We’re going for a black comedy with a murder mystery feel. The humor comes from the desperation and the sincerity of the characters.”

Later this season Bolenbaugh and the Fall Guy gang will present Big Rock Show! – a spoof of stadium concerts – and Accidental Death of a Anarchist by Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo.

Fall Guy Theatre presents The House of Yes, November 15 through December 9 (no show on Thanksgiving), 8 p.m.Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, Theater! $20, Theater! Theatre! S.E. 34th and Belmont.