‘Bughouse’ Is an Intense and Intimate Study of the Ultimate Outsider Artist

Long before “The Hunger Games,” there was “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” — a 15,000-page novel by Henry Darger, documenting a fantasy world in which valiant kids revolted against sinister grown-ups.Never heard of it? That may be in part because the author was a recluse, whose massive creative output included an 8,500-page sequel to “Vivian Girls,” a 5,000-page autobiography, and more than 350 watercolor paintings. But it was uncovered only the year before his death. In 1972, while Darger was staying at a Catholic nursing home, the collection was discovered by his landlord, an artist himself, and a tenant enlisted to help clean out his tiny flat.Darger is today considered a leading figure in outsider art, a term widely used to suggest unconventional work created by mostly untrained practitioners working outside mainstream circles. But that definition doesn’t begin to describe the alienation and utter destitution that apparently defined his life from early childhood on.The world premiere of “Bughouse,” a short one-act play conceived and directed by Martha Clarke, explores Darger’s art in the context of this anguish. Ms. Clarke, who has earned acclaim with pieces fusing theater, dance, and opera, has enlisted Beth Henley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Crimes of the Heart,” to adapt Darger’s writings, and has cast John Kelly, a celebrated performance artist, as the man himself — along with assorted voices that pop up inside Darger’s head.The result is a production, at the Vineyard Theatre off-Broadway, that despite its brevity — a recent preview clocked in at around 70 minutes — felt morose almost to the point of oppressiveness. The show opens with a loud clap of thunder as Neil Patel’s set, a hoarder’s tattered nest, goes dark; Christopher Akerlind’s lighting remains dim through much of the show.We learn how Darger’s mother died when he was so young that he could not remember losing her, and that he essentially lost his disabled father soon after that, landing in an asylum for “feeble-minded” children in spite of his precocity. Bullied by other children and abused by those responsible for teaching and caring for him, young Henry tried several times to run away, eventually making it back to his native Chicago.As an adult, Darger found work as a janitor and dishwasher, but he never escaped poverty, or the memories of his traumatic childhood. The latter fostered a preoccupation with others who had suffered like him, or worse. A newspaper report of the abduction and murder of a five-year-old girl in 1911 inspired the young, martyred heroine of “Vivian Girls”; when he lost the clipping, Darger, a pious Catholic, stopped attending Mass for years before fear of damnation led him back.It’s a credit to the creators of “Bughouse,” and to Mr. Kelly, that these horrors are documented with flashes of buoyancy and playfulness. Ms. Clarke, who is well known for her visual imagination has recruited a design team — including John Narun, Ruth Lingford, and Fred Murphy, who respectively manage projection, animation, and cinematography— that mines the wit and whimsy that could inform Darger’s paintings, disturbing as many of them are. Mr. Kelly’s performance, accordingly, is by turns droll and poignant, capturing both its subject’s restless mind and his troubled soul. “God is too hard to me,” his Darger finally resolves. If you can bear the weight of that suffering, “Bughouse” makes it powerfully palpable.

‘Bughouse’ Is an Intense and Intimate Study of the Ultimate Outsider Artist

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