Cleaning Up for Guests: Ruhl Play The Clean House Has New York Premiere Oct. 5

By Robert Simonson
05 Oct 2006

Blair Brown
Blair Brown
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Beginning Oct. 5, Sarah Ruhl's play The Clean House—which has played to great praise in regional theatres across the U.S. over the last three years—will finally get a New York house.

Vanessa Aspillaga, Blair Brown, Jill Clayburgh, John Dossett and Concetta Tomei star in the play, which will begin previews at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater Oct. 5. It will open Oct. 30 and run until Dec. 17.

Since its premiere at Yale Rep in New Haven in 2004, The Clean House has been seen at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Theater Company, Cincinnati Playhouse, and San Francisco's TheatreWorks.

A recent rave New York Times review of Ruhl's new play Eurydice (by Charles Isherwood, a Ruhl fan who previously raved about the debut of The Clean House) has only increased the excitement surrounding the production.

Ruhl's work, about a well-ordered household that is turned upside down when an interesting new maid arrives, was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Busy Clayburgh spent the previous year starring in A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Barefoot in the Park and The Busy World Is Hushed. Brown won a Tony Award for her work in Copenhagen and has been seen at Lincoln Center in Arcadia.

Aspillaga was seen on Broadway in Anna in the Tropics. Dossett's many theatre credits include Gypsy, Dinner at Eight and Mamma Mia!. Tomei has acted on Broadway in The Elephant Man, Noises Off and Goodbye Fidel.

The design crew is as follows: sets by Christopher Acebo; costumes by Shigeru Yaji; lighting by Jim Ingalls; and sound design and music by André Pluess. Bill Rauch will direct.