How Was the Play, Mrs. Kennedy?

“There was blood upon her white dress, and the signs of her terrible efforts to escape were upon every part of her thin form.” – Poe

“Victorie, my liege, and that with little losse.” – Kyd

The House of Yes (1997) is hilarious. That might seem like the wrong word for a movie about a family broken apart on the day of JFK’s assassination. The father left that day. There are three Pascal children. Two are twins, Marty (Josh Hamilton) and Jackie-O (Parker Posey). The baby is a gullible 20-something, Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.). Marty and Jackie-O have a ritual they’ve been repeating since they were eight and at an Ides of March party (ahem): they dress up like the Kennedys and reenact the assassination, complete with a gun, blanks, ketchup, and pasta (for brains). This little cultic performance brings them together, too close together. They are having sex, consider each other soulmates. I assure you: this is a comedy.

Adapted for the screen by Mark Waters from a play by Wendy MacLeod, the film plays like a chamber drama: we never leave the Pascal’s mansion in McLean, Virginia. The action begins in 1983 with Jackie-O, recently returned from a stay in the sanitarium, learning that Marty is headed home for Thanksgiving. Problem is he’s bringing a “friend,” Lesly (Tori Spelling). Mrs. Pascal (Geneviève Bujold) broadcasts her eccentricity almost as badly as her children, immediately hitting the wide-eyed Lesly with lines like “Jackie came out with Marty’s penis in her hand.” A storm rages outside, the power dies, and we’re in for a night of Gothic intrigue as Lesly gets closer to her fiancé’s secret, Jackie-O tries to draw Marty back into the twisted unreality of the Pascal home, and Anthony desperately pursue Lesly. When Mrs. Pascal discovers Lesly and her youngest son in bed (we get the feeling she may have set the whole sting up), she tries to blackmail her would-be daughter-in-law into leaving. Lesly, a working-class doughnut shop worker from Pennsylvania, does not fit in. But she wants what she wants and decides to fight for Marty’s heart. But things will not be so simple. Marty, back in his old stomping grounds, feels that almost spiritual pull. The twins have reenactments to do, and the hour grows late…

All the elements for a Victorian ghost story are here: the old, creaky house, the storm, the aristocratic family beset by some primordial curse. In this case, however, the specter is the Kennedy assassination. The father of the family left on the same day as the father of the country. Whether or not one personally feels so about Kennedy’s murder, the “country” does. Jackie-O does. She stands in for the shattered American psyche, the decades of Charlie Mansons, Lefty Rosenthals, and Elon Musks. Jackie is the America whose trust in institutions goes down year after year, the one who kills the phonies, the sad cries in the dark of night, sounding at nothing in particular. Stuck in the 60s; stuck in the 60s; stuck in the 60s. I can hear it now….it’s coming round the bend. I ain’t seen the sunshine since I ain’t no fortunate son. Imagine.

MacLeod’s play underlines the point in ways not as immediately obvious in the film. She explicitly sets the action in McLean, VA (the movie simply references that events take place in Virginia), home of many diplomats, spies, government bureaucrats, and well-to-do socialites. It is the former home of RFK’s widow, Ethel. Joe Biden once lived there. And let’s not forget Turki bin Faisal al Saud and Bandar bin Sultan (more often known as “Bandar Bush”). McLean is among the most haunted places in America, where dinner parties reenact horror on horror day after day. MacLeod, however, doesn’t stop there. She subtitles her play, “A Suburban Jacobean Play.” King James’ reign is best known for its revenge tragedies, gory affairs that soaked audiences in blood and guts (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is perhaps the most famous example of the genre). Revenge for whom and on whom? If you kill your twin, do you kill yourself?

I must reiterate: this is a comedy. And it has to be. The material is absurd, not in the sense that it is unbelievable or impossible but in the etymological sense. The play and the film deal with the discordant, the unheard, that to which we are not properly tuned, that to which we are deaf. To approach such horror straight on would get us nowhere. How many Americans lost their faith on that day almost 60 years ago? And how many have lost their minds trying to get to the bottom of what happened? How many minds have melted into single specks in single frames of grainy celluloid? And even if the audience could bear that, they’ve seen it before. They’ve seen the tragedy. Bring on the farce.

House of Yes delivers on the laughs, just enough to make the whole thing palatable. Be careful though. If after the viewing, you take a step back, you might find yourself asking: why make her think she’s Jackie Kennedy? Videre licet. Look out for ghosts.