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Goodman Theatre continues its 2005/2006 season with the play that is sweeping the nation—The Clean House by Chicago native Sarah Ruhl, one of the country’s hottest new voices. Acclaimed local artist Jessica Thebus, with whom Ruhl enjoyed an early writer/director partnership, will direct the play The New York Times has called “visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts.” Thebus’ cast includes Goodman favorites Mary Beth Fisher (Boy Gets Girl) and Patrick Clear (The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?). A deeply transformative and warm-hearted journey, The Clean House will run April 29 through June 4, 2006 in the Albert Theatre.
“Every so often, a play comes along that is so original, insightful and genuinely unique that it literally demands to be done,” said Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls. “With a storytelling method based in sharply observed realism but infused with equal parts fantasy and hope, Sarah Ruhl is a truly original voice—a writer of amazing power, vision and imagination.”
The inspiration for The Clean House, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Award, came from an unlikely source: a conversation that Ruhl overheard at a cocktail party. A doctor medicated her depressed maid to get her to clean, because the doctor “did not go to medical school to clean my own house.” This exchange became the first monologue in the play. Set in “metaphysical Connecticut,” The Clean House centers around Lane, whose life is exactly as she imagined it. She’s a successful doctor married to a handsome surgeon living in a beautiful house. And she expects that house to be clean. But her Brazilian maid, Matilde, is trying to come up with the funniest joke in the world, and cleaning just makes her sad. So when Lane’s sister Virginia offers to secretly do the cleaning for Matilde, everything seems to fall into place—until infidelity, disease, true love, and a few well-placed jokes throw Lane’s well-ordered world into the chaos that life, in all its messiness, can bring.
Playwright Sarah Ruhl, a native of Wilmette, IL, is one of the most produced writers in America this season, with The Clean House receiving productions at some of the nation’s leading regional theaters. She is a protégé of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, her mentor at Brown University. Ruhl’s ambitious trilogy Passion Play, a cycle, premiered at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage last fall; and Eurydice, which received its world premiere at Madison Repertory Theatre, was recently produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. This spring, Los Angeles’ Cornerstone Theatre Company will premiere Project 20, a new play based on interviews with 20-year-olds from across the Los Angeles area, and Theatre Communications Group will publish an anthology of her work.
With this production, Ruhl and director Jessica Thebus rekindle their longstanding professional collaboration—having first met through the Piven Theatre Workshop, where they studied with famed teachers Joyce and Byrne Piven. Thebus is an associate artist with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where her production of Lady Madeline recently opened, and an artistic associate with About Face Theatre. Her many directorial credits include Intimate Apparel at Steppenwolf; Red Herring at Northlight; Pulp and Winesburg, Ohio at About Face; Salao: The Worst Kind of Unlucky at Redmoon Theatre; Melancholy Play by Ruhl; and Abingdon Square by María Irene Fornés at Piven Theatre.