“Would anybody like to hear a joke?” Brazilian comedienne Matilde, a sassy young Latina newly arrived in the U.S. finds unsurprisingly no one will pay to hear her rural jokes in Portuguese. Instead she must clean for the upper classes – specifically the unhappily- married, careerwoman Doctor Lane – and also cope with the arrival of Lane’s fetish cleaner-sister, Virginia. While Matilde tries to think up the world’s best joke – in Portuguese! – instead of cleaning, she waits for better things to come , hopes to meet a soulmate, and ponders – what makes ultimately a good deathbed scene? Meanwhile Matilde’s new employer’s household crumbles hilariously around them, with the arrival of the husband’s mistress. Charles is another highly successful surgeon and his mistress Ana, Lane’s mysterious Argentinian rival, is interestingly her husband’s patient. Apples fall, hearts are broken. Matilde finds cleaning makes her sad, but it is nothing compared to the sadness of finding your soulmate and then letting them go, in a world where we are all apparently, outsiders looking in. Funny, tender and emotionally rich, this is a hugely entertaining 2005 Pulitzer finalist play about the chaos of marriage, life and falling in love. With magical realism and romantic cliché, it ultimately finds humor even in sorrow.

With a highly experienced cast, HIT ensemble regulars and the fresh face of Isabel Escudero Zorde as Matilde. This Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist play from 2004 written in English comes highly recommended, not only for theatre-lovers of all kinds but also for lovers and speakers of Portuguese.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yale-based playwright Sarah Ruhl is a new, highly respected and very important award-winning contemporary American playwright , whose writing has taken the American theatre world by storm, especially with this much-loved play. The Clean House was her breakthrough piece and has been produced throughout Britain and North America but never in English in Scandinavia. Don’t miss this rare, beautiful and tender piece of comedic drama about loving, living and dying.