‘House’ call

Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House” is cleaning up all around the country.

This quirky 2005 Pulitzer finalist has quickly become one of the most in-demand plays at regional theaters all over America.

It’s about a Brazilian housekeeper who really wants to be a stand-up comic. Apparently her employers, a physician couple, have other priorities: They would prefer that she dust.

Maybe it sounds like a sitcom setup, but by most accounts, “The Clean House” goes far beyond the obvious.

Critic Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called it a “play that keeps revealing surprising insights, whimsical images and layers of rich feeling as it goes along.”

He called it “one of the finest and funniest new plays you’re likely to see.”

Karen Kalensky, the L.A. actress and director who is directing this production for Interplayers, said: “It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s quirky and the characters are all great. From the moment I picked up the script to the moment I finished it, I could see the whole thing in my head.”

Ruhl, who was barely 30 when she wrote the play, told NPR in 2005 that she was inspired by a conversation overheard at a party.

A doctor said, “My cleaning lady is depressed and won’t clean my house. So I took her to the hospital and had her medicated. And she still won’t clean.”

Ruhl took that idea and ran with it in unexpected directions. She made the cleaning lady into Matilde, a woman who claims to be the daughter of the two funniest people in Brazil.

Matilde’s mother, unfortunately, died laughing. Matilde decides that it now is her destiny to be the funniest person in America.

Ruhl works various unlikely elements in the script: cancer-curing trees, the philosophy of dust and several jokes told entirely in Portugese.

Apparently, “The Clean House” is not entirely rooted in reality.

“Yet underneath everything there’s a kind of truth,” said Kalensky. “The realism comes from the heart.”

Kalensky said she was fortunate to find a lead actress who embodies Matilde. Silvia Lazo, known mainly as a local Latin jazz singer, is originally from Brazil and speaks fluent Portugese.

Not only that, Lazo told Kalensky that she once cleaned houses – and hated it.

The rest of the cast includes Selena Schopfer, Anne Selcoe, Jackie Davis and Gary Pierce.

Interplayers audiences might remember director Kalensky from her role as Glorie in last season’s “Grace and Glorie.”