The Clean House
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The Clean House is an award-winning play by Sarah Ruhl, which premiered in 2004 at Yale Repertory Theatre and has since been produced in many American cities. The play is a whimsical romantic comedy centered on Mathilde, a Brazilian cleaning woman who would rather be a comedian.
Mathilde's employer, Lane, is a successful doctor who doesn’t have time to clean or to deal with a depressed maid. Fortunately, Lane's sister Virginia loves to clean and secretly offers to help Mathilde. But when Lane's husband Charles leaves her for another woman (the older, free-spirited Ana), Lane's life becomes a mess that both Mathilde and Virginia have trouble cleaning up.
The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It has received glowing reviews from certain critics: Variety called the play a “…wondrously mad and moving work…” and Charles Isherwood of The New York Times dubbed it a deeply romantic comedy, “…visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts.” Other publications, such as The Village Voice and The New Yorker were more critical, registering complaints about the play's style and its treatment of Mathilde. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.
"The Clean House" has been produced at South Coast Repertory (west coast premiere, January 2005), the Goodman Theatre (spring 2006, in Ruhl's native Chicago)[1] and Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (New York premiere, October 2006).
