Housecleaning can seem a never-ending task. So why not have some fun with it?
Playwright Sarah Ruhl certainly had some fun with the idea of cleaning up – houses, marriages, lives – in her popular 2004 play “The Clean House,” which has opened the new season at Portland Stage.
Director Cait Robinson has pulled together – or perhaps let loose is the better expression – a highly entertaining production that captures the author’s magical way of combining both broad and subtle humor with a heartwarming message.
A scene from “The Clean House” Photo courtesy of Portland Stage
“Love isn’t clean. … It’s dirty. Like a good joke,” declares the independent-minded maid for a married couple of affluent Connecticut doctors. Brazilian Matilde (Jennifer Paredes) doesn’t much like cleaning and aspires to be a comedian, though from her parents she learned that jokes can be dangerously funny. Most of Matilde’s jokes, some addressed directly to the audience, are told in Portuguese. Absent knowledge of that language, audiences can still sense the postures and rhythms that lead to the release that comes from some well-delivered and heartfelt humor.
Indeed, it’s the pleasures of lightening up that will ultimately serve to rescue her employer Lane (Abigail Killeen) and Lane’s sister Virginia (Tod Randolph) from despairing of the perceived emptiness in their lives.
Matilde and Virginia strike a deal whereby the latter will clean Lane’s house, a “task” that will help Virginia fill out her lonely days, while the maid works on writing the perfect joke. This partnership of sorts results in a brief but wonderful dance sequence as well as an unpleasant discovery of possible marital infidelity by Lane’s husband, Charles (Rob Cameron). Lane had already sensed something was wrong but still takes the news hard.
Things get even messier when Charles brings home Ana (Michelle Rios), a cancer patient of his from Argentina, who has instantly become his “bashert” (soulmate). Ana, like Matilde, with whom she forms an immediate bond, provides heat to the chilly, all-white environment that the others inhabit.
The acting is first-rate with Paredes the go-to figure for her hilarious reactions to her employers and moving reflections on her own family. Killeen finds the pathos within Lane’s gradual overcoming of her wounds while Randolph reveals Virginia’s quirky grit. Rios embodies Ana’s links to a richness beyond the material and Cameron’s Charles soldiers on bravely amid the complex, intertwining motivations of the women in his life.
The scenic design by Bryce Cutler establishes the spacious but sterile product of unfulfilling success. The costumes by Emily White effectively give most of the contrast to Matilde and Ana. The lighting by Stephen Jones can seem doubly bright and unforgiving when bouncing off all the white furniture and walls before softening at the close.
With unbounded good humor, this thoroughly engrossing and very funny play suggests how a mix of love and laughter can help people conquer the yuckiest of messes.
Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.
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