thumb|thumbtime=2|upright=1.2|[[:File:The Playhouse (1921).webm|The Playhouse]]

The Play House is a 1921 American two-reel silent comic trick film written by, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. It runs for 22 minutes, and is most famous for an opening sequence in which Keaton plays every role.

Plot

The film is set up as a series of humorous tricks on the audience, with constant doubling, and in which things are rarely what they at first seem to be. It opens with Keaton attending a variety show. Keaton plays the conductor and every member of the orchestra, the actors, dancers, stagehands, minstrels and every member of the audience, male and female. As an audience member, Keaton turns to the "woman" sitting beside him and remarks: "This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show". This was a jibe at one of Keaton's contemporaries, Thomas Ince, who credited himself generously in his film productions.

This elaborate trick-photography sequence turns out to be only a dream when Joe Roberts rouses Keaton from bed. The bedroom then turns out to be not a bedroom, but a set on a stage.

The second half of the film finds Keaton's character falling for a girl who happens to be a twin. He has difficulty telling the twin who likes him from the one who does not. An uncredited Virginia Fox plays one of the twins. Eddie Cline co-wrote the production and appears, uncredited, as a monkey trainer, whose monkey Keaton impersonates onstage after accidentally letting the animal escape.

Cast

  • 'Buster' Keaton as Audience / Orchestra / Mr. Brown - First Minstrel / Second Minstrel / Interlocutors / Stagehand
  • Eddie Cline as Orangutan trainer (uncredited)
  • Virginia Fox as Twin (uncredited)
  • Joe Roberts as Actor-Stage Manager (uncredited)
  • Monte Collins as Civil War Veteran (uncredited)
  • Joe Murphy as One of the Zouaves (uncredited)
  • Jess Weldon as One of the Zouaves (uncredited)
  • Ford West as Stage Hand (uncredited)

Production

Development

Keaton had fractured his ankle in the film he worked on before this one, so The Play House relied more on cinematic techniques and sight gags than stunt work. It references gags from Keaton's vaudeville career with The Three Keatons, and also draws themes from the performances of Annette Kellerman, who employed 100 mirrors to create the illusion that there was more than one of her.

Release

The Play House was released on October 6, 1921, and distributed by First National Attraction.

Legacy

According to Wild Man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutan (2014): "The comedy turns on Keaton's extraordinary ability to imitate an ape imitating a man as he dines at a table, smokes a cigar, and then jumps, unscripted, into the auditorium, making a woman faint."

See also

  • List of American films of 1921
  • Buster Keaton filmography
  • The Oxford Playhouse (theater)
  • Joe Martin (orangutan)

References

  • The Play House at the International Buster Keaton Society