Sunday, June 15, 2008
A+E, Theater, Reviews
‘Clean’ sweep
Four of Atlanta’s best actresses tend stellar ‘House’
Lisa Adler
Carolyn Cook and Jill Jane Clements in “The Clean House”
“THE CLEAN HOUSE”
Horizon Theatre
$20-$30
404-584-7450
www.horizontheatre.com
Through June 29
By Bert Osborne
Matilde, the hearty Brazilian housekeeper around whom much of “The Clean House” circulates, has been searching for the “perfect joke” ever since she was a little girl, far too young to hear a perfectly fateful joke her father once told her mother (she died laughing, which drove him to suicide). As presented, that premise could read either funny or sad—and therein lies the delicate balance of Sarah Ruhl’s play, which is by turns pointed and poignant, whimsical and wistful. Before many of its flashbacks or fantasy sequences, Matilde will say, “This is how I imagine it … ,” and “The Clean House” regularly challenges our own imaginations, venturing off in unpredictable directions that are decidedly removed from reality.
Like Matilde learned years ago, you don’t always need to get the joke to appreciate the telling of it. Take the opening scene of director Lisa Adler’s crisp, sparkling Horizon production: Matilde (the ever-inviting Suehyla El-Attar) is trying out some comedy material on us—in her native Portuguese. The vast majority of the audience won’t have the foggiest idea what she’s talking about, but we’re never at a loss to enjoy the moment. With a tactfully measured swish of her hips or thrust of her pelvis, El-Attar gets the point across with a cleverness and sincerity that speaks volumes about humor as a “universal language.” However heightened the emotional plot twists to follow, her performance provides a calming influence and level foundation for the play.
What has any of this to do with cleaning house? That’s what Lane (Carolyn Cook) wants to know. She’s Matilde’s boss, a seemingly contented doctor, wife and suburbanite. She can barely pronounce Matilde’s name, and she’s not amused when she confronts her about slacking off on the job and hears the one about the maid who’d rather tell jokes than keep house. “I don’t always understand the arts,” Lane shrugs. Soon, her carefully ordered life unravels completely with the news that her husband has found his “soulmate” in another woman. (They’re played by James Donadio and Mary Lynn Owen, who also appear as Matilde’s imaginary parents.)
Cook is an inspired match for the role. No stranger to comedy (but better known for more “serious” assignments), her physical sense of timing and delivery is skillful and polished. Just as importantly, though, Cook makes Lane a believable, identifiable person—not just the sum of so many “superficial” mood swings, as if she were trapped inside a foreign film. There’s a discernible (if hardly logical) progression to the character; her inevitable enlightenment feels more truthfully realized by the actress than merely imposed on us by the playwright.
Jill Jane Clements portrays Lane’s visiting sister (and Matilde’s secret ally), who in one particularly priceless sequence literally tears up the scenery and makes a mess of Tamara McElhannon’s elegant set, scattering laundry and uprooting potted plants with wide-eyed but shrewdly controlled abandon. Donadio and Owen share their brightest moment during an operatic surgical operation. Other stylistic pleasures abound: “Movement designer” Celeste Miller choreographs a few of the scene changes as little dance routines, and Adler occasionally uses a multimedia technique to project worded stage directions or states of mind against a back wall. During a lengthy silence between the two sisters, you almost wonder if one of them has forgotten her next line—until we read that they’re simply reliving a defining “primal moment” from their childhood.
My admiration for these four actresses has been well-documented over the years. Far be it from me to say I told you so, but with so much undeniable talent in a single cast, how could “The Clean House” go wrong, really? To borrow Matilde’s refrain, this is just how I imagined it. SP