I have liked several plays by the brilliant young playwright Sarah Ruhl, and I was amused and entertained by The Clean House when I read it in manuscript several years ago. But I do not understand the great fuss over this play, even almost awarding it a Pulitzer Prize. Its funny, quirky plot strikes me as smotheringly whimsical, and I am never unaware of Ruhl's effort to surprise. Still, it is witty and fiercely good-natured and virtually guaranteed to provide its audience with a wry good time.
Geva Theatre Center's handsomely designed current production hits all the requisite absurdities of The Clean House, and Emma Griffin's bright direction zips through Ruhl's sometimes awkward development to keep Act I's constant reversals of expectations moving like a typical laugh-getting comedy. We start in a more-than-clean house, a mostly all-white, expensive looking modern one, where Matilde, the Portuguese maid who hates to clean, is relaxing and hiding from her employer,
Lane, a doctor who demands order ands cleanliness but seems mentally in chaos herself. After Lane
departs, her sister, Virginia, explains her passion for cleaning and arranges to clean Lane's house while
Matilde concentrates on finding the perfect joke.
Matilde tells about how her father committed suicide after her mother died laughing at a joke that he told her. Later we will see that Matilde's dream of finding the perfect (killer) joke will be realized so that she can tell it to Ana, who is dying of cancer.
Ana chooses that obviously satisfying method of ending her life.
Who is Ana? Well, she is a much older, not beautiful patient of Lane's dashing husband, Charles, also a doctor. Suddenly Lane finds out that Charles has fallen in love with Ana and wants to leave.
Tall, striking Anne-Marie Cusson is both funny and commanding as Lane. Tania Santiago brings great charm to the contrived role of Matilde. Lynne McCullough actually invests Virginia with considerable humanity while nailing every laugh-line. And Judith Delgado is magical as Ana, making that impossibly unreal character into a delicious, lovable person.
Tuck Milligan seems to have been partly jokingly cast as Charles because he is so much shorter than Cusson's Lane and more boyish looking than the handsome stud described in the dialogue. But although Milligan is a perfect foil and a physically funny image carrying his tree and pelted with snow, he plays his caring scenes with Ana with such touching love that he invests them with more genuine emotion than I think the script does.
