All in transition in The Clean House

Charles just performed a mastectomy on Ana and fell in love with her. When his wife Lane asks how it could happen, he says Ana is his “Beshert,” which is Hebrew for soul mate. But, Lane retorts, “you aren’t Jewish!”

Young Matilde’s parents were the funniest people in Brazil. Her mother, in fact, died of laughter when her father told the world’s greatest joke. Unable to live without her, he shot himself.

Mathilde also seeks perfection. She wants something, be it a joke or an apple, so extraordinary it’s unrepeatable. She also wants to be a comedian. She’s so engulfed in sorrow, laughter may be the only way out. And the last thing she wants to do is clean Lane’s sterile house beautiful.

Lane’s sister Virginia would love nothing more than to clean Lane’s abode, after, that is, Virginia’s given her own a thorough scouring. “If you don’t clean,” says the self-confessed dirt freak, “how do you know if you’ve made any progress in life. If it were not for dust, I think I would die.”

“Quirky” doesn’t describe Sarah Ruhl’s characters in this 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Nor does “magic realism” quite cover the style, since the gruesome’s right alongside the fantastic. Put it this way: Matilde is young enough to have good skin, but old enough to worry if her skin’s still good. She’s in transition. So are Ana, Lane, Charles, and Virginia. And so, says the playwright, is life itself.

It’s like hearing a joke in Portuguese, if you don’t speak the language. You have a choice: feel left out, or enjoy the attempt to tickle your funny-bone. In fact, that’s Matilde’s idea of heaven: it’s “a sea of untranslatable jokes, except everyone is laughing.”

New Village Arts’ production starts with Claudio Raygoza’s excellent direction. He must have a sixth — or tenth — sense for the material since he honors the magical and the mad, the grief and the elation, and yokes them with humor and compassion.

The cast is tops. Young Nadia Guevara enchants as Mathilde, as wise as she is perplexed. Kristianne Kurner and Tom Deak, as Lane and Charles, arc nicely from stiff entitlement to open-eyed acceptance. Catalina Maynard gives Ana an elegant toughness; she will live her life, every step, on her own terms, and with grace. Hannah Logan, at first unrecognizable in thick glasses and black bangs, simply is Virginia: fastidious, mega-repressed, and hilarious throughout, but especially when folding Charles’, um, laundry.

Brian Redfern’s set has a tall white fireplace, white walls, and curtains. It’s so classy only someone with Virginia’s “dirt fetish” would want to keep it clean. And would react in horror when the fireplace becomes a balcony and half-eaten apples cascade down on the floor that becomes a “sea.”

And would also react with awe when stuffing for a pillow becomes Alaskan snow, where Charles has gone to find a mystical yew tree and — no. No more. Go find out for yourself.