Hiring a home healthcare worker should be a straightforward proposition. As many Baby Boomers can attest, taking care of an aging parent is strenuous work physically and a difficult transition emotionally. Having a trained aide in the house can be a life-saver – to help ease the burden of constantly bathing, feeding and attending to the needs of an ailing loved one.
But when you employ someone to care for a member of your family – and they really care – where are the boundaries? What are the rules? And in an isolating age where we crave real connection more and more, can we hire people to be our friends, our support systems? All these questions, and more, are posed in the Milwaukee Rep’s thoughtful new play, "One House Over," by Catherine Trieschmann.
This world premiere production, commissioned by the Rep and directed by Mark Clements, presents poignant, funny and very recognizable moments in the lives of two families – one white and affluent and one Hispanic and struggling— as they sort out the borders of their relationships with one another and the endless, often shifting delineations of "us" and "them."
As the play opens we meet middle aged divorcee Joanne (Elaine Rivkin), who is overwhelmed with the duties of caring for her 89-year-old father Milos (Mark Jacoby). On the recommendation of a friend, she interviews Camila (Zoë Sophia Garcia), a young Hispanic woman with lots of experience but no certification, to become a live-in attendant.
The gorgeous Craftsman-style house in a storied Chicago suburb, which dominates the Powerhouse stage, is big enough for all of them to share (meticulous design by Kevin Depinet). Joanne can give private violin lessons on the second floor, Milos’s room is on the first floor, and Camila and her husband Rafael (Justin Huen), an aspiring chef, can occupy the basement. And of course they can all use the backyard.
It’s the communal area – a fenced in cement patio and carefully manicured yard – where we see the characters negotiate the terms of their new relationships. But it’s a place none of them really feels at home. Hard-working Camila dreams of returning to Mexico to take care of her own aging father, who was deported after being involved in a traffic accident. Also undocumented, the upbeat and easy going Rafael longs for his own restaurant in the States – after his family left Guadalajara when he was two, he feels much more at home here.
Petty, petulant and manipulative, the ailing Milos reminisces about leaving Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis and resents being treated like a child in his daughter’s house. Meanwhile Joanne wishes she had followed her own career in music instead of settling with her ex-husband in the suffocating suburbs, complete with roaming neighborhood association members snooping around for gossip and possible rules violations.
Each of these characters is also isolated, at odds with their own families, an outsider looking for comfort and a place to feel safe. As they navigate the differences between aid and maid, caregiver and companion, employee and friend, they each find moments of connection, but they are tenuous and fleeting. Issues of class and race dominate the first act with the completely expected disapproving neighbor – and baldly, hypocritically racist Milos, who romanticizes his own journey to America but yells at Camila to stop speaking Spanish, through his thickly accented English with plenty of Czech words thrown in.
And Joanna’s white liberal nervousness around Camila comes out in awkward bursts about how great it is to have Obama for president. (The play is set in 2010 and there are several references to the new era, where Hispanics have more political power and immigration reform will surely be a fait accompli under this progressive leader.) Rafael bristles at the suggestion that just because he’s Mexican he can’t be an expert in Italian cuisine and Camila swears she won’t have a child if it can be taken away by government officials if her illegal status is discovered.
In the second act of this beautifully nuanced play, Trieschmann subverts expectations and shows us what’s underneath the characters. Unexpected alliances form as family members consistently transgress the boundaries of their initial agreements. Micro aggressions and betrayals of trust of a new kind emerge, illustrating how much we all want the same thing: safety, love and a place to belong.
As Camila and Raphael, Garcia and Huen are the heart of the play. Their struggles to get ahead and thrive in spite of stifling prejudice mirror their complicated conversations with each other. Both actors are masterful in their code switching – presenting different personas depending on who they interact with – and Camila’s growing discomfort in the house clearly reads in her body, increasingly stiff and weighted down as she moves purposefully across the yard.
As Joanne, Rivkin is the least sympathetic character. She also seemed to have trouble filling the Powerhouse vocally. As the grumpy and failing Milos, Mark Jacoby provides most of the comic relief in the play. Relieved of his senses of propriety, his character is refreshingly honest – and base – about his needs. But his joy at opening a birthday present from the one member of the "family" who adores him is palpable. A bit sing-songy in his delivery, Jacoby occasionally comes off as a mischievous European troll, but his moments of emotional clarity are worth it.
There are a few moments in the script that feel clogged with exposition about the legalities and difficulties of immigration, but that is a minor note for a new play. Overall, "One House Over" is terrific accomplishment for Catherine Treischmann and the Rep team. It is painfully relevant and revelatory, a story that seeps slowly into hearts and minds creating complexities rather than hitting us over the head with a 60-second soundbite.
