Deep Dish Theater Company closes its seventh season with Sarah Ruhl's "The Clean House," a comedy about a young Brazilian woman and the people whose house she tends.

Tony Lea directs the performance, which will run from Thursday through May 24 at Deep Dish Theater in University Mall.

Ruhl said the idea for the play, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, developed from a remark she overhead a physician make at a cocktail party. "My cleaning lady is depressed and won't clean my house," the doctor said. "So I took her to the hospital and had her medicated. And she still won't clean! I did not go to medical school to clean my own house."

That comment evolved into the show's first monologue by Lane (Carole Marcotte), a successful, tightly wound surgeon whose Brazilian maid, Matilde (Ashlee Quinones), finds cleaning depressing and would rather spend her time practicing her stand-up comedy. When Lane's sister Virginia (Georgia Martin), who loves to clean, offers to secretly do Matilde's work, and Lane's husband Charles (Donnie Bledsoe) brings home a mysterious Argentinian (Delia Pantaleon), her perfectly ordered life is thrown into chaos.

Tinged with laughter, sadness, infidelity, illness, and an abundance of jokes, some in Portuguese, "The Clean House" creates a magically realistic world that the playwright calls "a metaphysical Connecticut."

"She creates a sense of heightened reality, showing us how we really live -- in our minds -- sometimes in the here and now, sometimes in the past, sometimes in fantasy, all with an intent to show the best in people," Lea said.

Lea has staged a number of memorable Deep Dish productions, including "Marvin's Room," "A Moon for the Misbegotten" and last season's "The Exonerated." He also appeared as Piet in Deep Dish's fall production of "A Lesson from Aloes."

Marcotte appeared in "Ancestral Voices," part of Deep Dish's inaugural season. The remainder of the cast are all making their Deep Dish debuts.

Audience discussions will follow matinee performances on Sunday and May 4 and May 11.

The Deep Dish Book Selection for this production is "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents," by Julia Alvarez. Evelyn Daniel and David Carr will lead an informal discussion about the book on May 22 at 6:30 p.m., prior to that night's performance of "The Clean House." The talk, held in Tyndall Galleries in University Mall, is free and open to the public; no prior attendance or registration is required.

A collection of stories about a Dominican family forced to leave their homeland for New York, "How the Garcia Sisters Lost Their Accents" spans 30 years and multiple points of view, focusing on the Garcia daughters' struggle to assimilate into North American society, and the clashes between Hispanic and American cultures that result. The book was recently at the center of controversy in Johnston County, where its content was deemed unfit for teenaged readers. It was subsequently pulled from the public high school libraries and classrooms.

Tickets to "The Clean House" are $16, $14 for seniors and $12 for students. May 8 is "Cheap Dish Night," when all tickets will be $7; no advance reservations will be taken for that performance.

For information or reservations, call 968-1515 or visit the company's box office in University Mall Wednesdays through Saturdays from 3 to 6 p.m.