Plum’s depression is giddier, and — talk about giving lessons — if you could bottle the scene in which she simultaneously laughs and cries, you could make a fortune as an acting teacher. She has good reason for doing both, and just when you thought she had exhausted her repertoire of double takes at the shenanigans surrounding her, in walk her husband and his newly beloved to explain what happened. According to Jewish law, he says, when you find your beshert, your soulmate, you are obligated to leave your spouse. Plum’s narrow-eyed disbelief grows with every word until she says to Charles, “You’re not Jewish.” Neither is Ana, though she’s played by another doyenne of Boston theater, Bobbie Steinbach. Not that it matters: her mastery of accents makes Steinbach a good fit in any language. Ana had always hated doctors because of their self-important walk. “I like a man who saunters,” she says, and Steinbach lets us know exactly what she’s talking about.
Rounding out the all-star quintet is the voice behind many a PBS show and BMW commercial, Will Lyman, who doubles with Steinbach as Matilde’s parents in flashbacks, though they’re so vivid that other characters can see them. That’s the kind of surrealism that gives the play its voice. The Clean House is an ode to the imagination, of not letting artificial boundaries — or real ones, for that matter — define how one approaches the world.
They certainly haven’t defined how Ruhl approaches the theater. In one scene, Matilde and Ana are on a balcony throwing apples into the ocean, but they land in Lane’s living room, providing Plum the opportunity for some even more inspired double takes. The way Matilde’s earthiness plays off the two sisters could be an ethnic cliché were it not for the acuity of Ruhl’s writing. “The perfect joke,” says Matilde, “makes you forget about your life. The perfect joke makes you remember your life.”
Cristina Tedesco’s large paneled backdrop provides the oceanic and blue-sky vistas. The whiter-than-your-house-will-ever-be foreground affords the characters a chance to find some understanding and (un)common ground about one another’s quirks.
My one quibble with The Clean House is that it doesn’t stay with you as long as a great play should. This is the third time I’ve seen Ruhl’s work, and it’s always enjoyable to watch — never more so than in this incarnation — but not something I find myself thinking about much the next day.
Well, I do have one thought. If Lombardo ever gets these actors and designers together again, I want to be there.
Whereas The Clean House needs a relatively large theater to work, Melinda Lopez’s Gary thrives in smaller confines, namely the front space at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Here we have another quintet, but the demographics are reversed. Four of the actors are up-and-comers — Nael Nacer, Elise Manning, and Karl Baker Olson are three siblings in a very un-Partridge-Family late-’70s rock band and Molly Schreiber is Cassie, the lead singer in love with Nacer’s Tommy. Adrianne Krstansky is the mother of the three.
Although Lopez doesn’t dwell on the economics, you wouldn’t think that this family could afford maid service. And though the music is inspired by the Kenmore Square rock scene of the ’70s, Gary refers to the Indiana city that provides the we-gotta-get-out-of-this-place setting.
