Seana McKenna on The Clean House
Star on Playwright Sarah Ruhl and Fiona Reid in CanStage Dramedy
Seana McKenna chats about one of North America's newest dramatists plus the chance to work with a longtime Stratford Festival colleague.
In The Clean House, Seana McKenna finally has the chance to have more than a few lines with longtime acting co-hort Fiona Reid. McKenna and Reid play sisters Lane and Virginia who have their lives arranged in pristine workoholic order. Neither one realizes how dysfunctional the other one is until the mess of life literally spills into both siblings' staunch raison d'etres. Playwright Sarah Ruhl breaks down emotional and physical barriers in this award-winning piece.
At 34, Ruhl (originally from Illinois) who studied under playwright Paula Vogel is one of North America's brightest new voices in the theatre. Her latest play Dead Man's Cell Phone starring Mary-Louise Parker opens at New York's Playwrights Horizons Mainstage March 4.
Sarah Ruhl … how do you feel about her a playwright.
"She’s pretty exciting but she’s young. She’s very good. She’s got some wonderful lyrical passages but she has inconsistencies throughout. Because as an actor, you think – why does she say cut down the ( yew ) tree" [There is a yew tree in this play.] If then you are going to plant it? You can’t cut down a tree and plant it" Young playwrights also often write cinematically, that you are going from scene to scene to scene in different locales. But that also breaks the barrier of stagecraft where you have to be in different places in one set and things like that. But Sarah is very exciting. She’s very funny and it’s quite moving, her work. "
What’s it like working with Fiona Reid?
"We are having a great time. Fiona is one of the reasons I wanted to do this piece because we’ve never had real scenes together. We‘ve never reeeely worked together. We’ve been in four plays I think but usually we were never onstage at the same time. Or we would have an exchange of three lines."
Like in (the Stratford Festival production Tennessee Williams’ ) Orpheus Descending …
"We had a little exchange as Beulah ( Reid ) and Lady Torrance (McKenna). In All’s Well That End Well – eons ago we had a little exchange, but The Clean House is the first time we have had actual scenes. Fiona’s great. She is the consummate professional and she does her work. She’s funny. We make each other laugh a lot."
I would think you have a pretty interesting chemistry on stage. [Seana laughs heartily.] I think you, Fiona, and Lucy Peacock would be a wild combination.
"That would be good. We need a three-hander."
Joseph Ziegler is also in this show.
"Yes he is, and that’s another person I have not worked with for so long. We went to school together in Montreal at The National Theatre School and we haven’t worked together since 1985."
Comments on your director Alisa Palmer. (Top Girls, Diana of Dobsons) I bet she has a strong female sensibility to the piece.
"I am not one of those people who believes you have to be female to do plays with female sensibilities or male to do plays with masculine sensibilities. I am a firm believer that each sex can have both and appreciate both and objectively see both. I enjoyed Alisa. She’s a very intelligent, funny, big-hearted lady. Her love of the piece communicated itself."
What’s the most challenging part for you in The Clean House?
"The first act are tiny little scenes and Lane is in a highly repressed state. When, I first accepted this role I went Oh great, Marty [to Marty Bragg, Canstage's artistic director], another bitch who weeps, because you do all the emotional heavy lifting. I have to weep three times in this play, but the audience still dislikes you because you come out with the acidic remarks and you say unlikeable things. I think Lane does have a journey and she does flower by the end of the play. She blossoms. Her compassion, her journey, is actually the greatest as well because she goes from one place and she travels a great distance in her self awareness and her ability to give and to get past her feelings about her husband’s lover [Free Spirit Ana - Mary Ann McDonald] to eventually take care of her [Ana has inoperable cancer] and invite into her home [where Ana and maid Matilde - Nicola Correia Damude befriend one another]. That’s big for Lane"
"I don’t think Lane understands people who don’t work. Her work ethic is so strong. If you wanted to work, why didn’t you? she says to Virginia. Her sister thinks she has no problems. Virginia says to her You have no compassion. Lane says Oh, really? How so? I traded my whole life so I could help people who are sick. What do you do? Because Virginia sits at home. She tries to think of things to volunteer for but she can’t think of anything so she doesn’t. Lane’s problem is that she is judgmental and I think she gets past those judgments and begins to see people as whole people rather than as what she likes or approves of."
Next Suite - Seana McKenna talks about the "magic realism" of The Clean House and Vern Theissen's monodrama Shakespeare's Will.
