With Don Alder directing, Profile and its artistic director, Jane Unger, hit perfect notes here, in part by having saved this dark, intriguing work — in some ways, Guare’s truest — for the end of its season-long tribute to the playwright.

"Sarah Lucht and Ted Roisum star in John Guare's "House of Blue Leaves" at Profile Theatre. If we didn't want so much from life, we wouldn't be so disappointed when we didn't get it. At least that's what John Guare seems to imply in "The House of Blue Leaves" -- a 1971 farce-tragedy, which was the playwright's first major theatrical success and is now being given a crisp revival by Portland's Profile Theatre."