John Guare's most striking talent is for savage farce. There are scenes in Act II of his first full-length play, The House of Blue Leaves …, in which his fancy boils over into a tempest of hilarity. They are the best things in the play; they provoke wild laughter and merit enthusiastic applause. Still, the play remains unfulfilled; the reasons are worth careful attention.

Guare is not simply a prankster. What motivates him is scorn for the fraudulence of our way of life. In The House of Blue Leaves he has been aroused by the obsession with big shots, "personalities," stars, the "in" tribe. That is a way of saying that we no longer see people as human beings; we worship "names." The imbecile, the villainous, the irredeemably mediocre possess glamour (even when we profess to despise them) if they have been sufficiently publicized. No wonder advertisement is the...