Verlyn Klinkenborg calls foul on the increasingly popular practice of pro-industry trade associations forming under the name of "consumer freedom." In this particular instance, it's the Center for Consumer Freedom (annoying video clip on the site's front page), which has taken aim at the (often equally annoying) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Kilinkenborg writes:

posted: 5:04:11 PM  

The delightful Guenia Lemos (as Matilde) tells a dirty joke in Portuguese to open Ruhl's superheated comedy of passion and death. Though hardly any of us in the audience speak the tongue of Matilde's native Brazil, the joke is still hysterical.

Matilde is house cleaner to Lane; Lane and her husband, both doctors, live in "a metaphysical Connecticut" in a house of supernal whiteness.

In Taichman's production of this fantasy, scenes separated in space and time leak into one another; people of one character's imagination are visible to a second; and a joke can be so powerful that it can bring both life and death. The perfect joke really will bring tears to your eyes.

Set designer Narelle Sissons has created a clever sight gag, a broom closet that looks like the cleaning products aisle at Costco. Naomi Jacobson as Lane is visibly vibrating in her vexation that Matilde is so depressed that she can't perform her duties. And Sarah Marshall delivers one of her most modulated performances as Lane's sister Virginia, a hyperarticulated, syncopated reading of a suburban housewife addicted to housekeeping. Virginia says in her opening monologue, "People who give up the privilege of cleaning their own houses—they're insane people."

posted: 4:48:57 PM