The Clean House

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Why would anyone in their right mind spend precious waking moments dreaming up the perfect joke? First of all it is not possible, and second there is no such thing as the perfect joke. That’s a joke by itself since both considerations are exactly the same.

(Left to Right) Romi Dias as Matilde, Charlotte Booker as Virginia, Judith Delgado as Ana and Caitlin O’Connell as Lane in the Denver Center Theatre Company production of The Clean House. The funny and touching comedy by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Wendy C. Goldberg. Photo by Terry Shapiro

It is very clear in Sarah Ruhl’s award-winning play The Clean House currently playing at the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Stage Theatre Matilde (Romi Dias) not only wants to but also has to.

A finalist for the celebrated 2005 Pulitzer Prize, The Clean House rolls metaphorically over the lives of four very distinct headstrong deliberate women, as smoothly as set designer Alexander Dodge glistened LaneÕs (Cattlin O’Connell) house with brilliant shades of white. White shag carpet, white sofa, white tables, white walls with the back of the stage covered in a glistening glass wall and door, allowing for fantasy memories to play in and out of reality.

Even Lane, a meticulous doctor, married to a surgeon, is dressed in white. It is quite obvious no dogs live in this house. It is spotless, and with the organized perfected image Lane strives to project, it will stay that way. So she hires a Brazilian maid, Matilde, to keep the house spotless.

There’s only one problem. Matilde doesn’t like to clean. She’s not really a maid. Fresh from Brazil, she took the job because she needed a job. She lives with a more compelling agenda floating in her mind and ruling her heart. She is bound and determined to find the perfect joke. Believing thoughts roam the universe, she just has to be at the right time, at the right place, in the right frame of mind and the joke will engulf her as though magnetically attracted to her wants and needs. Maybe if Matilda discovers the perfect joke, she will discover the perfect reason her parents died. She’s obsessed.

Obsessed with finding the perfect joke, as Lane is obsessed with living a high life of perfection, as obsessed as her sister Virginia is with cleaning, to fill the empty spot in her life. As obsessed as Charles, Lane’s surgeon husband is in finding romance in his life, content to live without it until it engulfs him engineered by a patient under the knife for breast cancer.

Dias fills Matilde with a crackling sense of humor, a desperate wanting, and compassionate understanding, mixed with bravado of deceit. She’s certainly not a maid anyone would want to hire, but she definitely is a character that would be great fun to have hanging around. Her sharp eyes carry a wily perception of her surroundings, her needs, and her wants as they clash with Lane’s expectations. There’s a hole in her life, digging deep into her soul. Her parents died when she was a small child. Her parents loved life, loved to dance, and loved jokes. She remembers her father was the funniest man in Brazil, and her mother literally died laughing at a joke that took him a year to create. So distraught was he, he took his own life. A joke, Matilde never got to hear. He told her at the time she was too young to understand. A Man (Jamie Horton) and A Woman (Judith Delgado) bring to life her fantasy-enriched memories of her parents in a bright light behind the glass window. Matilde’s laughter covers her heartbreak, and the humor enriched dancing feed her fantasy. Dirt on the floor doesn’t bother her as she explains, “If the floor is dirty, look at the ceiling.”

Virginia (Charlotte Booker) is another story. “If you don’t clean, how do you know if you’ve made any progress in life?” is her response. Virginia, Lane’s sister, lives with a deep hole carved into her life. Her house is clean by 3:12 PM. She has nothing to do but clean. She loves to clean. She loves to see the dust go away. She loves the result. She knows she should volunteer somewhere, do something meaningful with her life. She just doesnÕt know what or even where to begin. (She could begin at my house for starters. Oh, that’s right Virginia doesn’t live anywhere but on stage, and Booker is tied up keeping Virginia’s motor running.) Keeping her motor running, she does with a vulnerable assurance that pretends to hide her insecurities. Booker makes sure the insecurities leak out. She’s not as smart as Lane. She’s not as pretty as Lane. She has compared herself to her sister all of her life, and in her eyes she doesn’t measure up. In a quiet confrontation with Matilde, she comes up with the perfect solution. She will do Matilde’s cleaning before Lane gets home, freeing Matilde to concoct the perfect joke.

It works until Lane discovers the deception. In discovering that deception lane’s perfect life begins to unravel.

Metaphors dance all over the script and stage as Horton and Delgado dance in and out of scenarios. The major problem with the script is the metaphors are all too obvious, with very little to think about, they are laid out as polished as the glass windows across the back of the stage. Throughout the fabric run honest humor with very funny lines.

Lane knows her surgeon husband is having an affair. Charles (Horton) has fallen head over heels in love with one of his breast cancer patients. To make matters worse and slightly hysterical, Charles brings Ana (Delgado) the love of his life, home to meet Lane. Brazenly optimistic, Horton fills Charles with an outspoken confidence that lights up the gorgeous sterile while room. Charles tells Lane he thinks it is the right thing to do. And off Charles and Ana go into their world of dreams leaving Lane to search for the threads that unravel her life.

Set designer Dodge has held another secret close to his chest. A balcony opens wide above the set revealing the balcony of Charles and Ana’s love nest.

To topple a castle already crumbling around the edges, Ana’s cancer returns. As always in the face of tragedy, Charles feels compelled to do something so he races off to the Artic to find a yew tree containing elements that could prolong Ana’s life. He does find the tree. He does cut it down, but they won’t let him on the plane because the tree is too big, which means he has to take flying lessons, to get a license, to rent a plane to bring the tree home. Horton’s comedic expertise slices nicely into the life and death struggle and the bringing together of the four women who discover their compassion for Ana stretches the fabric of their lives over their own wounds, In the midst of life and death there is great humor. Someone once said it is not possible to face life until one has faced death. Our society lives with the hope and promise it isn’t going to happen to me, and when it does surprise, so many taken aback. Delgado wraps herself snugly in Ana expressing comic relief and at the same time demonstrating courage for life by literally standing up to death. She doesn’t want a relationship with a disease. She wants a relationship with death. She knows how to get its attention with an embracing laugh.

The Clean House comes with levels: levels on the stage, levels within the script, levels within the characters individually and as a whole.

Funny, cutting, brutal, cunning, laughing in the face of seriousness, grimacing in the face of laughter, the result is an honest, satirical hysterical, cut to the quick overview of human need, want, desire, ridiculousness, absurd wrapped snugly in the lives of four women and one man who means well, holds his heart in the right place, but lives in a mystical world of intent rather than reality.

In spite of its symbolism and metaphors running around loose out of its cage, the play is about as subtle as Eve handing the apple to Adam when Ana hands an apple to Lane. At the same time the script is written brilliantly laced with sensitivity to laughter, while it weaves through high-pitched emotions of anger, fear, emptiness, frustration, betrayal. The cast is exquisite. The direction finely tuned, the laughs honest, funny, legitimate, engulfing insight into human nature.

For anyone who has a clean house, wants a clean house, has given up on ever having a clean house both inside and out, this is the play to see, feel, absorb, dance, and laugh with It has more to give than just a dust free table.