Ruhl - The Clean House and Other Plays

Table of Contents

The Clean House, a fresh, funny play by the talented Sarah Ruhl, breathes life into the phrase romantic comedy. It 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 also visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts. Ms. Ruhls voice is an unusual one: astringent but compassionate, sardonic at times, at others ardently emotional. The Clean House is imbued with a melancholy but somehow comforting philosophy: that the messes and disappointments of life are as much a part of its beauty as romantic love and chocolate ice cream, and a perfect punch line can be as sublime as the most wrenchingly lovely aria.

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 brideand on her struggle with love beyond the grave.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Melancholy Play mixes the absurdity of Pirandello and Fellini and the edgy prettiness of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Off-beat, lyrical and just a little bit nutty, it is a real charmer.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

The Clean House marks the arrival of a playwright with a unique comic voice, perspective and sense of theater. A wondrously mad and moving work.

VARIETY

In The Clean House, Ruhl exhibits a gift for mixing straight chamber comedy and absurdist flights of fancy that adds up to a unique theatrical voice.

BOSTON GLOBE

Eurydice is a whimsical, often thoughtful exploration of memory as life and loss of memory as death. Theres much more than a tragic love story here. Ruhls combination of Beckett and Alice in Wonderland leaves a stream of thoughts trickling through your brain long after the flood of images has subsided.

OAKLAND TRIBUNE

Excerpts: The All New Joy of Cooking, reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The All New Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker. Copyright 1931, 1936, 1941, 1943, 1946, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1962, 1963, 1975 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.; copyright renewed 1959, 1964, 1969, 1971, 1974, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1990, 1991 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright 1997 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., The Joy of Cooking Trust and The MRB Revocable Trust. Reprinted by permission. / Its a Wonderful Life, 1946, directed and produced by Frank Capra, screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, with additional scenes by Jo Swerling, based on the story of Philip Van Doren Stern. Liberty Films, distributed by Republic Pictures. / Happy Birthday to You, Words and Music by Mildred J. Hill and Patty S. Hill, copyright 1935 (Renewed) Summy-Birchard Music, a division of Summy-Birchard Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. / White Christmas, copyright 1940, 1942 by Irving Berlin, copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. / Dont Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me), Words and Music by Charlie Tobias, Lew Brown and Sam H. Stept, copyright 1942 (Renewed) EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. Copyright assigned to Ched Music Corporation and EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. in the U.S.A. and EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. elsewhere throughout the world. Print rights on behalf of EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. Administered by Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I would be laboring in solitude without the help of my family.Thank you: Tony, Anna, Kate, Mom, Curt, Cecilia, Theo and the Kehoe clan, for making me laugh at myself. Thank you to Liz and the Charuvastra/Shells for baby-sitting while I go to rehearsals. And to the playwrights, poets and fiction writers who have offered their friendship, read drafts, shared tea and couches: Jacob Appel, Andy Bragen, Quill Camp, Julia Cho, Jorge Cortinas, Christine Evans, E. Tracy Grinnell, Beth Henley, Tina Howe, the Sewing Circle, Sherry Mason, Charlotte Meehan, Octavio Solis, Mark Tardi, KathleenTolan, Karen Zacarias, and all the folks at New Dramatists.

Thank you to the directors who I collaborated with on these plays in early drafts: Rebecca Brown, Richard Corley, Chris Fields, Daniel Fish, Davis McCallum, Kristin Newbom, Joyce Piven, Bill Rauch, Moiss Kaufman, Debbie Saivetz, Molly Smith, Rebecca Taichman, Jessica Thebus, Les Waters, Samuel West, Kate Whoriskey, and Mark Wing-Davey.

I also want to thank composers and designers who have made major contributions to my understanding of these plays. First, thanks to Christopher Steele-Nicholson, who taught me by example what it is to be an artist. Also, thank you to: Christopher Acebo, Scott Bradley, Andromache Chalfant, Michael Friedman, Andr Pluess, Bray Poor, Michael Roth, Jeffrey Weeter, and Darron L. West.

Thank you to theaters who bravely offered homes to these plays in early stages, for development or production: About Face Theatre, Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, the Lark Play Development Center, Lincoln Center Theater, Madison Repertory Theatre, the McCarter Theatre Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Victory Gardens Theater, The Wilma Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Yale Repertory Theatre. Special thanks to the Piven Theatre, where Joyce Piven commissioned and produced my first play outside of a university. She put great faith in me, and taught me anything I might know about the melody of a line in an actors mouth.

Many thanks to the dramaturgs and editors who have contributed to the life of these plays: Andr Bishop, Mark Bly, Liz Engleman, Lisa McNulty, Janice Paran, Rachel Rusch, Catherine Sheehy, Kathy Sova, Chris Sumption, and Craig Watson. Thank you to Bruce Ostler and Antje Oegel, who are secret dramaturgs and have helped these plays see the light of day.

Clearly these plays would not live without the actors who brought them to life. I want to thank all of you by thanking one in particularwho else could have played all these roles: Little Stone, Queen Elizabeth, Orlando, Eurydice, Tilly, and the Village Idiot. Only Polly Noonan.

Finally, I want to thank my teachers. To David Konstan and Joseph Pucci who made me love the ancients.To Mac Wellman for his rants, Nilo Cruz for his gentleness, and Maria Irene Fornes for her stark beauty. Most humbly, to Paula Vogel, for being the reason I started writing plays. And then being the reason I continued to write plays.

I wrote at least a portion of all of these plays when I lived on a street called Hope Street in Providence. I met my husband on Hope Street. Thank you Tony, for giving me the shelter and hope I needed to write these plays.