Clean House

Company: Queensland Theatre Company and Black Swan Theatre
Venue: Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane
Dates: To 31 July 2010

There is a lot intellectual and psychological delving into this play in the program, stuff about cleaning as transcendence, spiritual cleaning, and talk about Greek roots and that the author is “interested in transformation of a space and atmosphere”. Forget the analysing; it is a very clever and witty play with some sadness and some absolute Python insanity that made me laugh a lot. It also has one of the cleverest designs I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s an American play about a Matilde a 27-year-old South American cleaning lady who doesn’t want to clean; Lane, a successful doctor who desperately needs her house to be spotless and her sister Virginia who would give an eye tooth for Mathilde’s job.

The two storey set, created by Andrew Bellchambers, had doctor Lane’s home at floor level. This was an elegant white space with white furniture and decorations. It was classy modern design, but once Lane, also dressed in white, started to inhabit it, it sort of changed from elegance to clinical, hospital white. The upper storey was a Mediterranean style balcony filled with colour and brightness. David Murray’s lighting design was also excellent.

The good doctor was obsessed with order and cleanliness, but was too high up the social ladder to even consider cleaning her home herself. She was at her wits end with worry because she couldn’t politely persuade Matilde to do what she had been hired for. Matilde herself hates cleaning and only took the job after because she was orphaned when her mother died laughing at one of her father’s jokes and her father then shot himself. Since then her one aim in life was to be a stand up comedian and create the world’s greatest joke. Her main problem is that all her routines are in Spanish and they don’t translate well into English. Virginia is a childless and unfulfilled housewife, the complete opposite of Lane. Popping in and out of the action are memories of Matilde’s tango dancing, laughing parents; Lane’s husband Charles and his 60-year-old girlfriend Ana. She’s, the one who lives in the balcony set and, who like Matilde, is Hispanic. We discover that top rank surgeon Charles left his wife for an older woman, a patient who suffered from breast cancer.

That is the sort of situation that Sarah Rhule has managed to make sad and funny at the same time. And the play is like that, you never quite know what is going to happen next. When a heart wrenching situation arrives, it’s turned on its head to create belly laughs. Typical is when Charles leaves his sick girlfriend to run off to Alaska to find a medicinal pine tree whose bark will help relieve Ana’s symptoms. A poignant and noble gesture, but made ridiculous when we see Charles on stage rushing through blizzards and gales like a latter-day captain Oates. This is when Lane is persuaded to take the sick Ana into her own house, a situation which helps to change all the characters’ attitudes to life.

That pristine set slowly got wrecked during the play with falling leaves, snow, apples, and feathers from cushions among other things. My heart went out o the back stage crew who had to clean it all up.

Kate Cherry did brilliant job with the direction, mind you she had a terrific cast to work with.

Carol Burns was Virginia and she played her perfectly with her frantic speech patterns and a desperate desire to be appreciated rather than loved. She was hilarious when she blew her top in one wonderful scene. Sarah McNeill, tall and imposing was so good at being perfect it came as a complete surprise when she broke down and became human. Hugh Parker brought a beautiful stupidity to his role as a sort of old fashioned hippy minded Charles. He’s done a lot of comedy, especially on TV and film – including Black Books – and it showed on stage. His timing was impeccable. Vivienne Garrett’s Ana was the most stable and poignant character. Her obsession was with death, which she preferred rather than return to hospital for treatment. She was so good she made the idea believable.

But for all these great performances, for me Brooke Satchwell stole the play. We’ve all seen on TV, particularly in Neighbours and Water Rats, but she proved to be terrific on stage. Not only did she look and sound the part of the oddball Latino, but her timing in everything was perfect.
She created a fantastic character that the entire audience loved. I was just knocked out by her performance.

It’s often a weird play, but I do highly recommend it

Eric Scott

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