House of Yes (1997)

Lesly: I don't think you're insane.
Jackie-O: You don't?
Lesly: No.
Jackie-O: You don't think I'm an eensie weensie bit insane?
Lesly: I don't think you're insane. I think you're just spoiled.
Jackie-O: [exasperated] Oh please, if everyone around here is going to start telling the truth, I'm going to bed.




i do consider this play (written by a canadian, natch) one of the finest black comedies to have come out in a long time in its complexity and incisive humour. the film adaptation was mighty fine, with a deliciously deranged parker posey. here is the writer's reflections on something, nothing short, of a cracker.


Author's note

The play started with a particular house, a house I saw in an elegant suburb of Washington, D.C. There was just something about this chic, moneyed house that made me want in. And Lesly begins the play wanting in.

The title came from a graffiti I saw written on a bathroom wall: "We are living in a house of yes." And that made me think about Edgar Allan Poe and pornography and mostly about amorality. The play is about people that have never been said no to. It's about an insularity I see in the upper classes, people who have cut themselves off from the rest of the world and are living by the rules they've invented.

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. Mrs. Pascal desperately loves her daughter and is trying to protect her, and the twins love each other deeply, tragically. However to speak of such thinks is "déclassé" and the characters only allow themselves that luxury at one or two points in the play. It is that tension between the Noel Coward veneer and the Pinteresque subtext that makes the play both funny and moving.

Some common questions. What's the deal with Anthony? Why does he do what he does? Perhaps because he truly loves Lesly and shares his brother's longing for "normalcy." Perhaps he's out to finally outdo his older brother. Or perhaps he tears Marty and Lesly apart for his sister's sake.

What's the deal with the assassination game? The construct of the two Kennedys allows the twins to make love to each other. In a blurring of events, they have confused the Kennedys with their own parents and we are merely watching an X-rated version of children playing house.

Finally, who is telling the truth at the end of the play? Did Mr. Pascal walk out on the family or was he, in fact, murdered by Mrs. Pascal? I will only say that every actor must present their character's version with absolute conviction.

Wendy MacLeod
August 1995