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To be honest, the only video of this movie I've seen has been rather washed out. But the wonderful special effects of the first half still show through. This isn't a Melies' fantasy with avant garde stylings and effects, but rather a simple and almost elegant movie with one simple effect: Buster Keaton plays ALL the parts in a theatre presenting a minstrel show. This may not seem much in the CGI-world of the nineties...but back in the 1920's it was a tour de force. The ease with which Keaton brings together at least ten separate performances at one time is amazing...one can only imagine the planning that went into this movie.

The second half is a tad low-key...though it of course features more of Keaton's acrobatic slapstick, and a particularly striking bit with him dressed up as a monkey.

This is definitely not The General or Steamboat Bill, Jr., but it is very enjoyable and, I believe, very deserving of a high place in the canons of early film for the artistry that Keaton applied to the special effects.

In The Play House there is an opening sequence with multiple Buster Keatons on stage, playing the performers, musicians and the audience. It is a dream sequence which also comes across as a tribute to Georges Méliès.

This short then settles down as Keaton plays a stage hand and a performer, well a performing monkey. Keaton also tries to woo his girl but she is a set of identical twins and he keeps picking on the wrong twin to kiss. He then gets constantly interrupted by the main performer who is also a beastly big man leading to hijinks and acrobatics.

This short is rather episodic and surreal. Keaton's stunt work is more safe here as he was recovering from an injury at the time.

This is an unusual and extremely creative short comedy that shows off both Keaton's technical and comic skills, and it's loaded with clever visual details. Keaton's main character in this one is a stage hand, but he plays 20 or more different roles, most of them in the fascinating and bizarre opening sequence. The craftsmanship is perfect - even when several images of Keaton appear in one shot - and when you realize what the sequence represents, it's very suggestive as well. The main part of the film moves a little more slowly, but has some good laughs in it. There is a nice recurring joke about Keaton's girl - she is one of a pair of twins, and Keaton can never keep them straight. While Keaton made other films that are more uproariously funny, "The Playhouse" is a gem of inventiveness, and is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys silent films.

Drawing from his experience in vaudeville during his youth, The Playhouse is one of Keaton's most autobiographical shorts. Keaton displays his inventive genius for visual effects in a dream sequence by playing the role of all performers in a minstrel show and its audience as well. Each Buster, from drum player to a Grandma Buster, has its own distinctive personality and character. This is truly one of the great sequences of Keaton's career.

Buster is awakened from his dream of grandiose, caught sleeping on the job. In the second part of the short, he plays a stagehand who gets into trouble both on and off the stage. From this point forward the short relies less on technical marvel, but remains equally entertaining. Keaton's facial impressions when dressed up as a monkey are priceless.

As with most Keaton shorts, there are many unique details which enhance the overall film, but are not essential to the plot. Some of the funniest shots in the film don't even involve Buster, specifically two hilarious Civil War veterans in the theater's audience, each with only one arm.

Buster's co-star in The Playhouse is Virginia Fox. She does a charming job in a dual role playing twins. It has been written that in his youth Buster had a fondness for twin performers and was known to pursue both sisters.

Long before we became John Malkovich, an entire playhouse became Buster Keaton... and it's absolutely delightful. "The whole thing seems to be this Keaton fellow," says Keaton to Keaton dressed in drag (a much more attractive crossover than Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis!). Indeed.

Oh, but that's not all! Nooo, why stop there when we have an antagonist to show? Because Malkovich is only in the head, and thus Keaton is but a dream. However, the real playhouse owner... he has a bone to pick with the little guy, in some of the most hilarious Keaton hijinks.

This is the consummate Buster Keaton short. From the magic and creativity of the beginning, to the chase scenes and guy-gets-girl later story, we follow him as he takes on and removes persona faster than the speed of a swinging chimp! Oh, and he gets to play that chimp too, and very very believably.

--PolarisDiB

The Play House (1921) : Brief Review -

'This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show' and HE IS.. i pinched to reconfirm. The Play House largely for that famous sequence where Buster Keaton plays every role is nothing short of dream and that's exactly how he do in the film. The Play House is as familiar as its title and delivers the same promised by it. After waking up from his wacky dream, a theater stage hand inadvertently causes havoc everywhere he works. A riot of non-stop activities where every single one causes a hard laughter. It's not out an out comedy flick and with the short runtime, it never even tries to be one so prepare yourself for that. Otherwise, it offers a new Flavour of comedy with new sets of cones. The first 10 minutes are all about Keaton taking you all on a ride of a dreamy sequence and even in reality we have to believe that it's a dream only. Seeing 9-10 Buster Keaton on screen with 9-10 different make-up and get-ups is nothing else but fascinating. However, it's not hilariously funny because the visuals don't have the capacity to be wonderful and funny at the same time. Either Keating could have went for high end gags or he could have done this wonderful thing of appearing as 'the whole show' in those 5 minutes. So, he does it and he successfully creates that amazement park which is followed an amusement park in the second half. After that famous scene, things become normal and decent comedy is formed through errorful situations. That twin sisters scene is damn Funny though, especially that Kissing scene. In 22 minutes, Buster Keaton shows you different different colours out of his prism. Others hardly get anything to do something noticeable so let's forget them. Overall, The Play House is a mad house built by Genius Buster Keaton and one visit to this house isn't harmful at all. Another fine comedy and another memorable segment by the one and only Keaton.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

... and there is stiff competition.

This two reeler is set in a vaudeville house, the kind of place Keaton grew up in and where he grew into a comic as part of The Three Keatons, along with his parents, so he is familiar with this environment.

Keaton mainly plays a stagehand. Many descriptions say he is a goof up employee, but I'd say he is pretty innovative considering the strange messes into which he is thrown by the plot. He does some things here that you don't see much of in his other shorts - he pantomimes other types of people than he is or has had much contact with entirely. In the audience he plays an upper crust couple commenting on the low brow humor, he plays a grandma and her grandson, and he play s a middle class couple. He is also "the whole show" towards the beginning as there are all Busters in the orchestra, in a minstrel show, and he manages to dance with himself onstage, showing his knowledge of the camera and what it can do.

He also falls in love with one of two identical twins, played by Virginia Fox. Since he can't tell them apart without drawing an X on the one he wants, you have to wonder how he knows he really wants that one in the first place. Virginia Fox was the future wife of Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox for decades.

If you are not familiar with Buster Keaton's work, this is a great place to start. But then when it comes to Buster I can't think of a bad place to start save for his sound films at MGM, and even they have their charms.

I just watched The Play House which was the first film that was presented in the "Industrial Strength Keaton" DVD collection of various Buster Keaton films from the silents to the end of his life. The first half where he appears in various incarnations of himself was quite impressive especially when 9 of him appear together in the same frame. Some amusing, if not hilarious, gags occur there. The rest of the short has Buster being an actual stagehand/performer who goes through more hilarious mishaps that has to be seen to be believed. I especially loved the way he put out a man's fiery beard or got a woman out of a water tank. Not to mention how he impersonates a monkey. Or how he tells one twin sister from another. So on that note, I highly recommend The Play House.

For some reason, I find the Buster Keaton features such as "the General" and "Steamboat Bill Jr." to be well-made, yet lacking in the explosive laughter I would expect. His short films however, pack a punch with comedy. "The Playhouse" is his best work ever - a showcase of his versatility and unparalleled comedic techniques. Any musician watching his clarinet technique (gnawing on the mouthpiece) can't help but hit the floor when they watch the opening orchestra scene. Likewise, the variety of audience members he plays, this is amazing. I can't help but wonder... how long (given makeup and costumes) did this one scene take to film? There are also more Warner Brothers cartoon foreshadowing in this than most other films I've seen. For a true short film masterpiece, see this film.

In his prime, there was nobody quite like Buster Keaton, deservedly considered one of the greats in silent comedy. Nobody back then and even now were as daring when it came to high-risk stunt work in physical comedy and he was an unparallelled master at making deadpan both funny and expressive. Something that one doesn't see an awful lot as many would struggle at doing one of those let alone both well.

'The Play House' may not quite be among his very best overall, in a filmography full of quintessentials. When it comes to Keaton's short films though, and there is a vast amount of them, it's one of my favourites. 'The Play House' is a must see for any fan and for anybody and everybody and it is one of the most imaginative and funniest examples of the type of story it has, deliberately and undoubtedly silly certainly but endearingly so.

Of his silent short films, 'The Play House' is one of the best looking. The closest his short films get perhaps to being a technical achievement with a surprising amount of boundary pushing in film trickery when playing the amount of characters Keaton plays simultaneously.

A lot of funny and even hilarious moments, beautifully timed, deliciously wacky and it never feels too much. All of them work, when you watch 'The Play House' having just watched a good comedy albeit with a couple of misses in the humour department or a comedy that is not funny at all and not good in quality too that is great. There is enough variety to not make it all repetitive. Some of the more physical work is typically daring

While a very slight one, the story is charming and never dull, even with the freedom it has. The vaudeville dream sequence is the very meaning of a show-stopper. Virginia Fox is appealing and the rest of the cast have fun with their roles.

Keaton is the reason to see 'The Play House' though. In a huge number of roles executed simultaneously and handled expertly. Such great comic timing and he is worth rooting for as well, his unique quality of his deadpan delivery never faltering.

Summarising, wonderful. 10/10

Michael Keaton's real name is Michael Douglas, but for obvious reasons he had to change it. He selected "Keaton" as a tribute to the most inventive physical comedian in the history of cinema, Buster Keaton.

In 1996, Michael Keaton starred as multiple copies of the same character in the film "Multiplicity". I suspect he knew his namesake had beaten him to the punchline some 75 years earlier.

In "The Play House", Keaton used carefully timed multiple takes and repeated exposures to have as many as 9 copies of himself in the same picture at the same time. Keaton is simultaneously the conductor, six musicians, 9 members of a chorus line and at least 5 members of the audience. It takes away nothing to note that this is all a dream sequence.

But the segue from the dream sequence to the main story contains one of the most brilliant twists I've ever seen in a film of any era. Buster is awakened from his slumber by a cruel looking man who orders him out of his room. In the background, the "landlord's" aides take away the furniture from Buster's "apartment", then his bed, and then remarkably the very walls of the room! We back up to find that this is not Buster's home - he has fallen asleep on a bedroom set of a stage.

Buster is a worker at a variety show, and most of the rest of the film has him replacing everything from a soldier to a magician's assistant to an orangutan, with frequently hilarious results.

Buster Keaton's "The Play House" is that rare silent comedy that stands the test of time. While much of Chaplin, Lloyd or the Keystone Kops output seems juvenile, coy, silly or just plain unfunny, Buster Keaton's work still can cause you to laugh out loud.

During the dream sequence, on one title card an audience member (Keaton) reads the playbill and notes "This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show." Yes, but what a show!

A BUSTER KEATON Silent Short.

You can expect a lively night when the Buster Keaton Minstrels entertain at THE PLAYHOUSE.

This hilarious little film is a tour de force for Keaton, who is often devastatingly funny. The amount of obvious effort that went in to making the special effects work is also impressive. Highlights: the opening minutes, with Buster playing absolutely everyone in the theater, from an old lady to a little boy, and, a little further on, Buster's peerless impersonation of a chimpanzee.

Born into a family of Vaudevillian acrobats, Buster Keaton (1895-1966) mastered physical comedy at a very early age. An association with Fatty Arbuckle led to a series of highly imaginative short subjects and classic, silent feature-length films - all from 1920 to 1928. Writer, director, star & stuntman - Buster could do it all and his intuitive genius gave him almost miraculous knowledge as to the intricacies of film making and of what it took to please an audience. More akin to Fairbanks than Chaplin, Buster's films were full of splendid adventure, exciting derring-do and the most dangerous physical stunts imaginable. His theme of a little man against the world, who triumphs through bravery & ingenuity, dominates his films. Through every calamity & disaster, Buster remained the Great Stone Face, a stoic survivor in a universe gone mad.

In the late 1920's Buster was betrayed by his manager/brother-in-law and his contract was sold to MGM, which proceeded to nearly destroy his career. Teamed initially with Jimmy Durante and eventually allowed small roles in mediocre comedies, Buster was for 35 years consistently given work far beneath his talent. Finally, before lung cancer took him at age 70, he had the satisfaction of knowing that his classic films were being rediscovered. Now, well past his centenary, Buster Keaton is routinely recognized & appreciated as one of cinema's true authentic geniuses. And he knew how to make people laugh...

This has to be one of the strangest, most daring films ever made by a major Hollywood studio, and surely the funniest and most perceptive study of madness in all cinema. The first ten minutes are a breathtaking display of bewildering surrealist magic. Buster Keaton buys a ticket for a variety show. Buster Keaton conducts an orchestra of Buster Keatons, defeated by their hostile instruments. An art-deco line of Buster Keaton minstrels have a calm discussion, while pairs of male and female Buster Keatons make up the audience, restless, spiteful and belligerant.

This is stunning cinema in any language (arf), and a supreme visualisation of mental breakdown, distorted personality, megalomania, and the most terrifying anxieties. It is also an hilarious pre-empting of the auteur theory - the elaborate playbill reveals Buster Keaton to be responsible for EVERYTHING, from scenario to lighting - this monopoly of creativity leads to chaos, madness, fragmentation and estrangement.

As in so many of Keaton's films, this remarkable fantasy is shown to be the dream of a lowly, bullied man, this time a theatrical hand. Far from diminishing the film's dreamlike structure, this revelation intensifies it. An astonishing series of variations on the line between art and life, dream and reality ensues, an argument which descends into ever-increasing spirals of confusion and disintegration.

Some of Keaton's best comic set-pieces follow, all hilarious in themselves, yet underlining the melancholy and fears of Buster himself - be he ordinary man or isolated genius. Life can never remain stable for him, his personality is shot to pieces - whether through existential crises or booze is unclear; like Gulliver in Houyhnhm land, his humanity is stripped to the level of bestiality - a very funny, subversive sequence, which is as despairing as the end of NIGHTMARE ALLEY.

The supposedly redemptive love interest is a bewildering, tormenting game on Buster, as he repeatedly fails to remember which twin is his fiancee. The continually collapsing sets are a thematically rich, Usher(playhouse, geddit?)-like representation of Buster's fragile mind. To universalise the genius of Buster Keaton is to belittle and emasculate him. He is like us only because his trauma is so particular.

First part of the movie is amazing surreal scene where Buster Keaton performs all the parts himself. Then he wakes up and we learn that it was all his dream, but when suddenly some workmen start to tear down the walls of the bedroom, the viewer is momentarily taken back into the dream, until we finally learn that Buster Keaton was just an ordinary stagehand that took his nap on the stage, and the room was just a decoration. From there on Buster continues his ordinary workday with hilarious mishaps. The film is pretty tame considering the part of neck breaking stunts, but the more amazing is the opening sequence where Buster Keaton is the whole show. Wonderful movie that shows how inventive as a director Buster Keaton was even without performing any amazing stunt work.

Buster Keaton shows off some of his signature blend of physical comedy, visual puns and amazing gags in this great short. Although instances of black-face date the film, I find it greatly relateable even over 100 years after the release. A great laugh for anyone who has played an instrument or been involved in a theatrical production. It gets a 9/10 because the only thing it is missing is an ending to rival Keaton's longer works.

Buster Keaton goes to the theater and sees the stage full of Keatons. In The Playhouse from 1921 Buster plays not only the actors, but also members of the audience (including women and one kid), staff members and even a monkey. And he also has time to fall in love with a girl (Virginia Fox). The only problem is that she has a twin sister, and he has hard time telling which is which. This silent short made me laugh more than once. Buster as the monkey is something hilarious. And when Buster puts off a beard fire with an axe! This movie is a fine proof of Keaton's talents. He was truly a master in physical comedy. And what a fine example of movie magic- the 1920's style- this movie is. In the minstrel show you see nine Keatons on stage. That's really something!

A spectator goes to buy a ticket, looking for money in a multi-pocket wallet. Keaton himself directs an orchestra of himself, reprising "L'homme orchestre" of Meliès. The name of Buster Keaton is on every role of the list. Also the different actors of the theatrical performance are always him. While he has to dress a monkey, he escapes and he disguises himself as a monkey, going on stage. Later, Keaton always goes to free an acrobat enclosed in a container of water with a cup. After, he breaks the container and the water falls on the public. To escape the artistic director, he swims in the orchestral hole as if he were at sea, rowing with his instruments. In the Keaton cinema there are the chase and slapstick mechanisms, renewed in a geometric and acrobatic vision of a reality that is upset.

Play House, The (1921)

*** (out of 4)

Buster Keaton short starts off with a dream sequence where he plays twenty plus different characters. The second half of the film deals with Keaton destroying a stage play. To call this a gimmick film would be an understatement because Keaton certainly goes all out in the first part of the picture. I wouldn't say anything at the start is funny but it's certainly amazing and interesting to watch. The second part of the film is where the laughs start to pile up including a wonderful bit where Keaton plays the part of a monkey.

The first seven minutes of this short, featuring Buster Keaton playing 26 unique characters, are absolutely delightful. Buster is the guy who buys a ticket to see "the world's greatest minstrel stars," all seven members of an orchestra, one stagehand, nine minstrels in blackface, six audience members (three of whom are women), and a two man tap dance act. I'll say up front that, mercifully, the blackface characters get the least air time, simply telling a couple jokes, so don't let it stop you from seeing this gem.

Meanwhile, even in the long shots of the orchestra, Buster tried to do something with each character. The trombone player motions to the drummer about something in the score, and the drummer responds. The violinist wipes his nose with the back of his hand on one of his bow strokes, and at one point the drummer fires a gun into the air. We get solo shots of the conductor scratching his back with his baton, and the bass player chalking his bow as it were a pool cue. The bassoon player struggles to get his instrument into his mouth before beginning to teethe on it like a baby, and then it's back to the bass player bowing as if her were trying to saw a tree down. The trombonist has to oil his slide, causing it to then slip off the instrument when he tries again. The whole thing ends with the conductor's score scattering, and the chaos is exactly what you'd expect from an all-Buster orchestra.

Buster also played three pairs of audience members. He's an affluent man with his wife who's fanning herself; he reads from the program and quips "This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show." He's a boy licking a lollipop and his grandmother who tells him to keep his feet off the railing. He's also an older woman in a low-cut dress, who tells her dozing husband to wake up, whereupon he startles and begins clapping. The boy above drops his lollipop into her lap, which she promptly mistakes for her opera glasses and sticks to her eye socket; meanwhile, the grandmother in response to the shouting below accidentally pours her bottle of coke onto the husband, who then opens an umbrella. It's simply brilliant.

Buster awakens from a dream to seemingly find that he's being evicted, but then in a clever bit, we see he's assembled his room at a studio. As the workers fold up the walls of his "apartment," we see "Act 3 Scene 4" written on the back of one of them. He then begins his workday as a stagehand by punching the clock - literally. Two actresses then show up, twins, naturally, which Buster doesn't realize at first, making him think he's seeing one woman appear and disappear and then double, which in turn causes him to (briefly) swear off alcohol. When he re-emerges, they're both standing in front of mirrors, and later he stands in front of three face mirrors himself, the fun continuing. Later he'll fall in love with one of them, and mistakenly make his overtures to the wrong one (his ultimate solution being to paint a large X on the back of his love's neck).

After losing an orangutan used in the show, Buster dresses up as a chimp himself, walking around, galloping up into a chair, and smoking a cigar to play the part as one comically. Later, he employs construction workers to play Zouave guards under his command which was a little less successful, but the motion effects during their assembly was clever, as was the crowd revealed standing behind a large man. The film may have faded a teeny bit during its second half, but by that point, I didn't care. You get little moments like Buster whacking a man whose beard is on fire in the face with a fire axe, then hacking off both his beard and mustache with said axe, as well as him coming to the rescue of one of the women in her underwater act at first by using a small cup to ladle water out of the tank. Naturally, he then goes for an enormous sledgehammer, finding comedy in both extremes, and causing a literal deluge in the theater. He even rows off in a drum, using a violin for an oar.

This short is just jam packed with gags and with Buster in all of those roles early on, it's truly special. Just to achieve appearing on the screen in 2, 3, and even 9 times with little to no distortion or edge effects was dazzling. This is definitely one to check out.