The Clean House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Clean House is a play by Sarah Ruhl
Mathilde is a cleaning woman who likes to tell jokes but hates to clean. Born to the funniest people in Brazil, she is on a mission to find the perfect joke. But Mathilde works for Lane, a successful doctor who doesn’t have time to clean or to take care of a depressed maid. Lane’s sister, Virginia, loves to clean and secretly offers to help Mathilde with her predicament. That seems like the perfect arrangement until Lane’s husband (Charles, also a doctor) leaves her for another woman. Lane’s home may be tidy but her life is a mess and now Mathilde has two houses to clean. In Sarah Ruhl’s utterly original comedy, everyday life is infused with magic, and the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. Four women discover the power of the perfect joke and along the way learn that life’s messes should be treasured as much as its beauty.
Winner of the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Clean House has largely been hailed by critics. Variety called the play a “…wondrously mad and moving work…” and Charles Isherwood writing in The New York Times dubbed it a deeply romantic comedy, “…visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts.” Critical response to the play became more mixed after the play reached Off-Broadway, however, with many critics still celebrating the writing but other publications like The Village Voice and The New Yorker registering complaints about the play's style and its treatment of Mathilde.
Yale Repertory Theatre produced the world premiere in October, 2004 followed by South Coast Repertory's west coast premiere in January, 2005. Though Ruhl is originally a Chicago native, her hometown was slow to reward and recognize her talents as a playwright; the Steppenwolf Theatre originally turned The Clean House down, and the Goodman Theatre didn't produce it until spring of 2006[1]. The New York premiere was presented by Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in October 2006.
