This is my review of the fourth and final entry of this year's Theatre Ontario Festival. This is a yearly event which brings together the winning productions of four regional festivals held over the previous several months. Since the selection of shows is entirely in the hands of the four adjudicators of those regional festivals, interesting oddities can definitely crop up in the list of shows. In this case, for the first time in many years, none of the shows are Canadian scripts. "That's just the way it turned out!" (Peter Schickele) Some will lament this, but for myself I have to say that I feel a total concentration on Canadian works to the exclusion of all others would be equally unfortunate.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl
Representing WODL (Western Ontario)
Presented by Theatre Sarnia
After three evenings of more-or-less conventional plays, we have come up on the last night against a wildly unconventional script. Sarah Ruhl is a currently active American playwright, and her work reflects an uncommon level of psychological sensitivity. She has said herself that she does not wish to connect the psychological dots in a linear way. She has referred to her style as "magical reality". You definitely have to prepare for a certain level of disconnect from rationality when you come to experience The Clean House which was originally performed in 2004. While at first glance it may resemble theatre of the absurd, it definitely isn't absurdist, although strange things do happen.
Theatre Sarnia's production takes place on a blindingly white set: white walls, white posts, white geometric outlines, white sofa, chair, table, bar, bar stools. The abstract wall painting made up of squares in shades of grey strikes an almost shocking note of colour! A 2-door cupboard, when opened, reveals a geometrically neat arrangement of cleaning supplies and a laundry basket. An upper wall serves as a screen to project subtitles, some explanatory, some with tongue planted firmly in cheek (an excellent example of the latter is the final moment of Act One, "The audience feels impelled to buy a glass of wine.")
I mention all of this because, once the play begins, I simply didn't notice these elements any more. From the moment that Ashley Carlisle, as Mathilde (the Brazilian maid and wannabe comedian), began by telling a joke in Portuguese, I was sucked right into the bizarre yet strangely logical world of the play. In no time, it made perfect sense that we had a sister who hated to clean her perfectly orderly house, a maid who didn't like cleaning either, and another sister who was obsessed with cleaning everything.
Carlisle's performance as Mathilde anchored the show through the first scenes. Her storytelling sequences were delivered with clear voice and clear body language. Although A Man and A Woman (Jay Peckham and Jan Walker-Holt) appeared stage left to portray the stories of her parents, and did so with comic verve and energy to spare, Carlisle's nuanced storytelling alone would have still given us a very clear picture of them.
Megan Hadley projected icy emotional temperature as Lane, the non-cleaning sister. One of her most telling moments came when she admitted that she and Charles, her husband (both doctors), had not loved each other but had "admired" each other. The sheer unlovable nature of this character was so brutally evident that it came as no surprise to me when her husband left her for another woman. It was at this point, when her frozen façade cracked and she began to let her humanity show through, that I began to care about her -- and little by little, as the play went on, she became a more viable personality in the tangled familial web of the story. This was a tour de force of acting, as Hadley nudged the character along by tenths of a degree at a time towards her ultimate thaw.
Henri Canino had marvellous comic moments as Virginia, the clean-freak sister. Her expressive face projected 101 shades of disgust, amusement, anger, puzzlement, arousal, and so much more. The scene where she was caressing a pair of jockey shorts that she was supposedly ironing was one of many comic highlights. In thinking back over the show, I'm surprised that with so much craziness going on there were very few moments of high-speed comic action -- but Canino had one of the best in the moment where Virginia had to change places with Mathilde at the ironing board.
Once Lane's husband, Charles, and his new soul-mate Ana appeared on the scene, Peckham and Walker-Holt portrayed those two characters exclusively. Peckham gave an effective portrait of a man deep in love, probably first love, and Walker-Holt turned the temperature up noticeably as the hot-blooded Argentinian woman who captures him. The darkly and absurdly comic tone of the entire first act can best be summed up by the scene in which they fall passionately in love -- with subtitles -- as he tells her she has breast cancer and she asks him to remove her breast tomorrow.
As the play progresses the absurdity gradually falls away. These characters may sound foolish on paper, but playwright Ruhl does allow them the dignity of the lives they are leading. Lane in particular has to work through some major transitions in her life as she agrees to share Mathilde's maid services with her ex-husband and Ana. The scene in which Ana and Mathilde stand on the balcony of Ana's house, eating apples, and pitching away the ones they don't like, seems at first merely comical. As the apples fall into the living room of Lane's home, where Lane lies weeping on the sofa, she notices them and reacts to them! At first I laughed, of course -- who wouldn't? -- but then the scene took on an unexpected poignancy and emotional depth.
In the end, Lane takes the biggest step of all by agreeing to help Ana (who has had a recurrence of cancer) and to take her in and care for her. By this time, the laughter of the play has almost all been spent and the human dimensions of the story become all important. This is a huge shift in tone, which was beautifully accomplished by all of the company, on and off stage alike. Although Charles has one more ridiculously comic moment, as he tromps through Alaska in a parka, looking for a tree that can help to heal Ana, it accomplishes nothing -- a fool's errand. It is Mathilde who attends the dying Ana, and Charles who arrives home too late.
Of all the characters, though, Lane is the one who has been most transformed by all that has passed, and it is Hadley's performance that sticks in my mind, gradually unbending by degrees, the icicle queen thawing, drip by slow drip, into a human woman that she has never been in her life before.
Lest all of this sound too, too perfect, I did have some difficulties with some of the elements. I wondered why the detergent bottles in the closet had to be yellow -- there are white ones available in stores, to match the white-everything-else in the set! I found one of the conventions of an exit annoying. Everyone always seemed to have to circle the sofa on the stage left side before moving up right to exit. That circling movement got tedious, and seemed unnecessarily long somehow. I'm not sure what solution could be used.
I also found Charles' walk during his Alaska sequences unconvincing. Given the howling winds (great sound work, by the way), I'm sure it was meant to suggest walking through deep snow, but this is not done by kicking the leg straight out in front before putting it down. The effect came across as a goose-step, and I'm sure that was not the intended effect, nor the desired association.
I undoubtedly laughed louder and longer than at any other show this week, but also came closer to tears. Theatre Sarnia has taken on a really tough play, one that is far more subtle than it might appear on the surface, and came up with a powerful performance. For this, director Holly Wenning and all of her team deserved every bit of the energetic applause they received last night.
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