‘Clean House,’ messy humor

Superheroes live double lives, the pizza deliverer studies law and the characters of “The Clean House” search for meaning in far-out places. 

The award-winning play contains themes mastering the complexity of reality and unbelievable irony, it opens 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Wells-Metz Theatre.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl said she wrote “The Clean House,” her sixth play, through inspirational eavesdropping at a party.

Originally produced in Connecticut, this play has traveled throughout the nation, falling into the hands of director Jonathan Michaelsen, chair and producer of the Department of Theatre and Drama and the Brown County Playhouse.

The script’s opening page warns, “Everyone in this play should be able to tell a really good joke.”

“The Clean House,” takes place in “metaphysical Connecticut,” where the perfect joke teases the sense of reality and fantasy comes down to earth.
 
“It’s some place you can’t drive to,” Michaelsen said.

Characters defeat the purpose of their roles by searching for new meaning.
Living in the house are a young Brazilian maid, Matilde, played by junior Stephanie Feeley, who hates cleaning, and a middle-aged couple – Lane, played by graduate student Molly Casey, and Charles, played by graduate student Alex McCausland – separated by an acquired soul mate.

The obsession of keeping life orderly leads to an internal mess. But together, the characters grow cleaner. Remarkably, the characters’ journey allows them to manage a house, learn how to love and break down walls, said Michaelsen. 

Charles leaves his wife for his soul mate, Ana, an Argentinean woman with breast cancer played by junior Alana Cheshire. Terminally ill, Ana chooses to abstain from treatment and enjoy what is left to live.

Cheshire similarly lost her father to cancer when she was a young girl.

“Playing this role helped me come to terms with the experience,” she said.

Depression preys upon the characters and challenges their methods of handling it differently. While Lane’s estranged sister, Virginia, played by graduate student Abby Rowald, is a therapeutic cleaner, Matilde faces adversities with humor.

“Matilde is all about spreading laughs and sticking to what makes people happy even in times of crisis and sadness,” Feeley said.

From slow-motion fights to death by humor, action captivates “The Clean House.” Charles treks in the snow to Alaska looking for an enormous tree carrying a medicinal quality that will lengthen Ana’s life.

Crawling onstage on a mission to a ridiculously big tree is so absurd that it’s funny, said senior and stage director Britney Kuehm.

“The Clean House” is constructed of culture barriers, life and death cycles, struggles, passions and beliefs tied together with a bow of laughter. 

Michaelsen said eccentric extremes of humanity balance the absurd hilarity that will take the audience on a theatrical ride.