Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14049
AUGUST 2010 SPORTS & EDUCATION 68 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT : ON STAGE WRITTEN BY DANIEL ALBERT BRING IN THE CLEANERS If laughter truly is the best medicine, then International City Theatre's new comedy will provide the laughs and more. ICT, known in the city as one of the premiere locations for theatre, is presenting yet another gem with "The Clean House." This whimsical romantic comedy centers on Mathilde, a Brazilian housekeeper who is more interested in coming up with the perfect joke than in cleaning the house. "The tale spins off into a web of intrigue as four markedly different, yet intimately connected women, grapple with order, cleanliness, and the messy ambiguities of life in a quirky and unexpectedly moving comedy about love, loss and the power of a good joke," according to the production notes. The plot centers on literally "dying laughing." In the play, Mathilde is recently orphaned due to a very funny joke when her parents, both comedic geniuses in Brazil, died within days of each other a year ago. Her mother died while laughing at her father's joke and her father shot himself soon after. Ever since, Mathilde has vowed to find the 'perfect joke' even though she is convinced it will kill her. A year later, Mathilde works as a house cleaner for an American family. The plot then focuses on "The Clean House" and on competing attitudes about cleaning house, which becomes a metaphor for the life problems of putting one's life house in order. Plot twists include conflicts about cleaning or not cleaning house, a depressed wife, a philandering husband and an in-law sister, Virginia, who is 'obsessed' with cleanliness, and offers to clean the house, thus entering into the intrigue. The plot thickens in the second act, as Mathilde becomes friends with "the other woman" Ana, and Mathilde eventually decides to spend time at both homes, each of which house warring and depressed inhabitants.