The Clean House and Other Plays

Additional The Clean House and Other Plays Information

"Passionate. Show-stopping. Daringly over-the-top and impressively consistent in its delirious excess. The Clean House shines."-New Haven Advocate

"The Clean House is not, by any means, a traditional boy-meets-girl story. In fact disease, death, and dirt are among the subjects it addresses. This comedy is romantic, deeply so, but in the more arcane sense of the word: visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts."-The New York Times

"Touching, inventive, invigoratingly compact, and luminously liquid, Eurydice reframes the ancient myth of ill-fated love to focus not on the bereaved musician but on his dead bride-and on her struggle with love beyond the grave."-San Francisco Chronicle

This volume is the first publication of Sarah Ruhl, "a playwright with a unique comic voice, perspective, and sense of theater" (Variety), who is fast leaving her mark on the American stage. In the award-winning Clean House-a play of uncommon romance and uncommon comedy-a maid who hates cleaning dreams about creating the perfect joke, while a doctor who treats cancer leaves his heart inside one of his patients. This volume also includes Eurydice, Ruhl's reinvention of the tragic Greek tale of love and loss, together with a third play still to be named.

Sarah Ruhl received the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 for her play The Clean House, which has been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Her play Eurydice has been produced at Madison Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

What Customers Say About The Clean House and Other Plays:

This collection is a wonderful introduction to her work. The language, the humor, the emotional connection to the characters.Sarah Ruhl is a brilliant playwright.

She is definitely interesting, but perhaps she tries too hard to be different, with mixed results While I did appreciate her work from a literary point of view, I didn't really find her work on a par with what the hype had brought me to expect. I chose Sarah Ruhl's plays as a source of language for an advanced EFL course, wanting an example of contemporary American English. The situations and word play, however, make her work unsuitable for this.

This is drama, yeah, but it is drama that even contains poetic line-breaks.: I feel I can deposit my painright there--like a coin, into a hole.(from Melancholy Play, page 236)In a March 2008 New Yorker interview, Ruhl calls herself "a fabulist." She is someone whose characters build rooms of string and travel in raining elevators (Euridyce). As a list given here, such material might be perceived as mundane and dull. In another story, Ruhl echoes Monty Python's idea of jokes that can kill--only hers are used as mercy killings (The Clean House). A woman is irresistible to all men when she is miserable, but the moment she finds happiness, the world shifts and almost no one can stand her any longer.Perhaps most fun of all reading a Sarah Ruhl play are the stage notes, which one would never have the opportunity to enjoy if sitting in the audience and watching the thing. Before Sarah Ruhl was a playwright, she was a poet.

Having never seen a Sarah Ruhl play produced, this writer can tell you that it's not the least bit necessary to enjoy this book. You look a little bit like her."The Clean House and Other Plays is a collection of silly, enchanting and weird stories that, despite their oddness and impossibilities, still hold the ring of truth. Ruhl writes in a way that is so human it is impossible not to be moved. (Melancholy Play)The experience of reading plays is a different one from that of reading other fiction or non-fiction works.

Plays stretch the mind to consider subjects such as lighting, sound, and props. This is not a great surprise. However, in the world of this play, there is no need for twins to resemble each other. In Melancholy Play, for example, Ruhl has notes about the casting. Ruhl's characters are full of wonderfully playful, bizarre contradictions: For example, the psychiatrist in Melancholy Play, LORENZO THE UNFEELING, takes every opportunity to enlighten the people he comes in contact with to the sad, tragic details of his childhood and to the fact that he not only feels, but has gone completely overboard, falling in love with his melancholy patient, Tilly. A Brazilian housekeeper detests housekeeping, and longs to be a comedian.

If your Frances and Frank look nothing alike, simply change this line on page 315: "TILLY: My God. A lack of narrative and the addition of technical details doesn't mean that the nuances of emotion are left behind as something only the actors can manage.

You look nothing like her." or even: "TILLY: My God. It stands on its own as a great piece of literature.This review first appeared on Night Times.

You look exactly like her." to "TILLY: My God. I mean, just look at the format, imagery and dialogue found in The Clean House and Other Plays.

Frances and Frank, we learn later in this play, are twins. Tears, real tears, are no doubt regularly shed as Ruhl's readers feel the beautiful emotional-roller coaster moments on these pages: the strong father-daughter bond and ridiculousness of new romance in Euridyce; the love for parents and heartbreaking compassion of The Clean House; the true and false loves of Late: A Cowboy Song; and the sweet disorder of Melancholy Play.

Ruhl's lesbian cowboy seems natural riding imaginary horses in Pittsburgh (Late: A Cowboy Song); and watch where you step, because the depressed are turning into almonds at almost every turn. In Sarah Ruhl's hands, they become magic.

Ruhl seems to suffer from a bit of shame deriving from her white midwestern roots. There's some good stuff in there, and some very cliched aspects as well. I read a profile of Sara Ruhl in THE NEW YORKER and was intrigued by the lack of psychologizing in her plays. So I bought a book of her plays.

My Absurdism students will be able to select which play or plays they wish to examine. This anthology is reasonably priced, by a woman, and contemporary, rather than modern.