Good Help Is So Uplifting These Days
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Both the movie “Spanglish” and the musical play “Caroline, or Change,” recently at the Ahmanson Theatre, explore American culture and race relations through the interplay between a housekeeper and the family whose lives she transforms. We checked in on each to count the silver.--
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“Caroline, or Change,” musical by Tony Kushner
On staff: Caroline Thibodeaux, 39, African American.
Employed by: The white, Jewish Gellman family of Louisiana, circa 1963.
Demeanor: Acerbic, proud, fierce.
Clothes make the maid: Think “Hazel.”
Quarters at work: “Purgatory,” i.e. the boss’ basement.
Salary: “Bupkes.”
First companion on job: A talking washing machine.
Middle of the night: Smokes and listens to the radio on front porch.
Boss: A clarinet player who misses his dead wife.
Employers’ colorful relative: Socialist step-grandfather, a hat salesman who coins such zingers as, “Down with the filthy capitalist chazzerim!”
Culture clash: Occurs while making potato latkes for Hanukkah.
Link to writer’s previous work: Capitalist dialectic continues.
Link to “Sideways”: Characters drink wine.
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“Spanglish,” by James L. Brooks
On staff: Flor Moreno, unbelievably gorgeous native of Mexico who’s in her 20s.
Demeanor: Nurturing soul, loosely cleavaged.
Employed by: The Clasky family of Bel-Air, circa 2003.
Clothes make the maid: Think “I Dream of Jeannie.”
Quarters: Own room in Malibu beach house.
Salary: “How much a week do you want?” ($650)
First companion on job: Employers’ Labrador.
Middle of the night: Studies English.
Boss: Chef with a big critic coming to review him.
Conflict with employer: Falls in love with him.
Employers’ colorful relative: Alcoholic grandmother, a jazz singer who says: “I lived my life for myself, you lived your life for your daughter. None of it works.”
Culture clash: Boss offers her daughter $640 for sea glass collected on Carbon Beach.
Link to writer’s previous work: Plumbs the neuroses of America’s white middle class.
Link to “Sideways”: Cast member Thomas Haden Church.
