*Bughouse,* Apr 4 2026

I saw Bughouse at the Vineyard Theatre on April 4, 2026. It’s a new play about Henry Darger, conceived and directed by Martha Clarke on a script by Beth Henley, adapted from Darger’s writings. Darger is the first person I heard referred to as an “outsider artist.” He worked as a janitor and dishwasher in a hospital outside of Chicago. He lived in a boarding house - - his two-room apartment was cleared out shortly before his death and what was found there boggled the imagination. He had written a 15,000-page novel called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. He also wrote an 8,500-page sequel. To my knowledge these works haven’t been published, even in excerpts. His reputation was made by the illustrations he did for his book, more than 350 monumental and often disturbing watercolors, some as much as 11 feet wide.

I saw an exhibit of Darger’s work when I moved to New York in the early 2000s, I also saw two documentaries. Wow, one of those documentaries is on YouTube:

I don’t know why he was having such a resurgence then (he died in 1973) but I was fascinated by him. My brother Howard saw an ad on Instagram for the play and I bought a ticket.

This was a classic silk purse, sow’s ear situation. It was beautifully presented, with animations of Darger’s paintings often projected onto the stage. John Kelly gave a nuanced performance as Darger (the only character onstage, though we sometimes hear prerecorded voices).

The problem was the play. Darger’s imagination seems to have poured out of him like a fire hose yet the play was sorely lacking in imagination. It often felt like a boilerplate biography of him. He deserves better than an actor facing the audience and saying, “Then I hopped on a freight train and went to Decatur.” It’s a pretty sad comment when a play is 70 minutes long and doesn’t consistently hold your attention.

There was one moment that will always stick with me - - Darger was imagining a scene from his book being done as a radio play. You heard a little girl voice, playing one of the Vivian Girls, and you heard the plummy voice of a male radio announcer narrating the story. Kelly, the actor playing Darger, lip-synched to the voice of the radio announcer. This scene was accompanied by hokey 1930s radio play music. It was a moment dazzling in its inventiveness. I understand you can’t have a whole play like that but please, more of those moments.

You know what I’d like to see? A BALLET about Darger, with a non-dancing actor (John C. Reilly comes to mind) and a cast of young women playing the Vivian