Lives of wealthy hoarding Collyer brothers provides rich material for new production

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Andrew J. Pond (left) and Edward Kuffert star in "Clutter: The True Story of the Collyer Brothers Who Never Threw Anything Out" at the Greenhouse Theater Center.

‘CLUTTER: THE TRUE STORY OF THE COLLYER BROTHERS WHO NEVER THREW
ANYTHING OUT’

◆ Jan. 19-March 11

◆ Greenhouse Theater
Center, 2257 N. Lincoln

◆ Tickets, $40

◆ (773) 404-7336;
greenhousetheater.org

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Full disclosure: On some level I fully empathize with the Collyer brothers, those fabled New York siblings from a well-to-do family who, over the course of several decades, engaged in compulsive hoarding, filling to capacity the Fifth Avenue brownstone home in Harlem where they were found dead in 1947.

Like many writers, even in this cyberspace age, I have a serious paper problem. Newspapers, magazines, books, press kits, programs and printouts pile up with astonishing speed. And despite the hope of catching up with the ever-growing mountains of the stuff, time becomes the enemy.

Of course Homer Lusk Collyer (who earned a degree in nautical law at Columbia University), and his brother Langley Wakeman Collyer (a concert-level pianist) were a far more extreme case. The men, who are the subjects of Mark Saltzman’s play, “Clutter: The True Story of the Collyer Brothers Who Never Threw Anything Out” (in its Midwest premiere by MadKap Productions at the Greenhouse Theater Center beginning Jan. 19), became recluses rather early in adulthood. They spent most of their lives obsessively scavenging for books, furniture, musical instruments, works of taxidermy and junk of all sorts, eventually rigging their building with booby traps to prevent intruders. When their corpses were found, amid what reportedly about 130 or so tons of refuse, they also became the subject of newspaper headlines. And the emptying of their once grand Harlem home became a sort of bizarre street theater event that attracted many hundreds of onlookers who even brought their own chairs to the spectacle.

“I lean toward being a hoarder, but maybe I’m just a pure slob,” said Saltzman, the multiple Emmy Award-winning writer of songs and sketches for “Sesame Street” and “The Muppets,” whose play debuted at the Colony Theater in Burbank, Calif., in 2004 (years before “Hoarders,” the popular TLC series, arrived).

“I think if you look at the desktop of most writers you can extrapolate some truth about the Collyers,” said Saltzman. “The stuff can just so easily explode, and the potential to become like those brothers lurks. One push and you could go there; it’s a slippery slope from a messy desk to piles of papers that reach the ceiling. And then there are those closet hoarders who rent storage lockers. That has become a big business because those lockers allow you to hoard while looking perfectly normal in everyday life.”

Saltzman is certainly not the first writer to be fascinated by the Collyers. Among others, playwright Richard Greenberg riffed loosely (and poetically) on the brothers’ lives in “The Dazzle” (seen in a Steppenwolf Theatre production in 2002), and the pair also inspired E. L. Doctorow’s 2009 novel, Homer and Langley. The particular appeal of the story for Saltzman was rooted in his New York childhood (he has lived in Los Angeles for 20 years), and his memory of how traumatic the story was for people of his parents’ generation.

“In a way it was their local boogeymen, a sort of monstrous bit of folklore,” said the writer. “And I guess I filed it away in my brain along with all the other monsters and New York lore I love, like Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman in ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ With the Collyer brothers cames a story about wealthy eccentrics — descendants of the Livingston family, one of the early New York dynasties. And they must have enabled each other in some way, with Langley, the dreamy artist who dressed in Oscar Wilde style, exasperating Homer, the more pragmatic lawyer. I also saw the elements of a film noir detective story here as well, because at one point there was a manhunt for Langley after someone reported seeing him in New Jersey. Of course there is just the underlying mystery of these men, and the mania their discovery set in motion.”

“Clutter,” with a cast of six, is being directed here by Wayne Mell (managing director of Lake Forest-based Citadel Theatre). The story is told from the perspective of the brothers, as well as from that of the police investigating the case.

“I’m really thrilled about this production,” said Saltzman. “Not only is it that very difficult thing to make happen — a second showing for a new play. It’s also the first play of mine to be done in Chicago, which has such a great theater reputation, and about which I’ve been learning firsthand recently.”