It’s not uncommon for a comedy to open with a joke. However, it’s not often told to the audience in a foreign language.
“The play opens with a Brazilian housekeeper who desperately wants to be a comedienne — to do stand up,” Director Marge Uhlarik-Boller said. “She comes out and tells the joke in Portuguese. It’s hilarious.”
At the time of the joke, it is not translated for the audience. But is it ever explained? “You’ll have to come and find out,” she said.
Audience members will meet the aspiring comic, Matilde, when “The Clean House” opens Feb. 26 at Steel Beam Theatre in St. Charles. Performances of the play, which runs through March 20, are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and at 3 p.m. Sundays.
“It’s a romantic comedy with a lot of oddball humor in it. And it’s got fantasy in it as well. It’s a very lovely little play,” said Uhlarik-Boller, who lives in Elgin. “It’s actually got moments where you laugh out loud and then moments where you are crying because it’s so tender.”
Set in present day “metaphysical Connecticut,” the play tells the story of a doctor, Lane, who hires a Brazilian maid named Matilde.
“She’s too depressed to clean her employer’s house,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “The doctor’s sister comes in and actually ends up taking over the cleaning of the house.”
In the meantime, Lane’s husband, Charles — who is a surgeon — falls madly in love with one of his patients, Ana, who is an older woman from Argentina.
“The lives of these people intertwine,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “The play is about our need to control, how life is messy and how life and love and death all intertwine and are all very, very human.”
First performed in 2004, “The Clean House” was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play was written by Wilmette native Sarah Ruhl, who also penned “Eurydice,” “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” and “In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play).”
“Sarah Ruhl is a very brilliant woman,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “She’s hilarious, too. She’s got a great quirky sense of humor. What’s interesting is she originally studied to be a poet. So a lot of her writing has this sort of interesting unexpected poetry to it, but it’s not highbrow at all. It’s not. There are a lot of belly laughs. We laugh a lot.”
Steel Beam Theatre decided to stage the production, Uhlarik-Boller said, because she loves its humor so much.
“And I like it because much like the play I directed last year, ‘Almost, Maine,’ the show has a little nod to fantasy,” said Uhlarik-Boller. “Which theater does better than anything. Really, it does. We can’t compete with movies. We can only compete with your imagination. I just love the way this playwright uses imagination.”
Appropriate for those in middle school age and older, the comedy features five cast members — four women and one man.
“It’s just been a labor of love. It’s one of those groups of people that when you get together, it’s like ‘Oh good, we get to have rehearsal.’ And you don’t always feel that way, sometimes it’s a bit of a chore,” she said. “But this one, the play is funny, and it’s thoughtful. It’s just so much fun, everybody wants to be there, so we are.”
The biggest challenge so far with the production was perfecting the foreign language used, as there are a few moments when Portuguese and Spanish are spoken, including the opening joke told by Matilde.
“She does it beautifully,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “She actually worked with somebody to get the Portuguese down.”
The instances where another language besides English is spoken are minimal, and do not affect comprehension of the dialogue.
“In the context of the rest of the show, there aren’t a lot of moments where you don’t understand what they’re saying,” she said. “It’s just a very funny beginning to the play. It’s very delightful.”
Another challenge is decoration of the set, in which everything must be white.
“That’s a big trick,” Uhlarik-Boller said. “Doing shades of cream and tan to make it look interesting.”
The white décor of the living room is specified in the script, she said. “It’s what the author asks for. A white room,” she said. “A clean house.”
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“The Clean House” is Steel Beam’s fourth main stage production this season, and the comedy offers a change of pace from the recently closed drama, “Yankee Tavern,” Uhlarik-Boller said.
“I think it’s a really fun follow-up to ‘Yankee Tavern,’ which was sort of a conspiracy thriller,” she said. “This is a bit more light-hearted, although it has a lot of heart to it. It’s a nice play.”
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer.
‘The Clean House’
When: Feb. 26-March 20
Where: Steel Beam Theatre, 111 W. Main St., St. Charles
Tickets: $28 adults; $25 seniors 62+ and $23 students
Information: 630-587-8521 or steelbeamtheatre.com