CHAPEL HILL - Have you heard the one about the depressed house cleaner?

She'd rather tell dirty jokes than clean dirty floors.

Not funny? How about with a rimshot? A pratfall?

Indeed, the least funny thing about Sarah Ruhl's disjointed 2004 play "The Clean House" is the academic approach to comedy taken by the central character, Matilde, an aspiring comedienne from Brazil whose struggle to conjure the perfect joke sucks the punch line out of her amusing circumstances.

And maybe that's Ruhl's point in this absurd drama, which takes place in what Ruhl calls "a metaphysical Connecticut." But as with Matilde, the harder Ruhl tries, the less compelling the result.

At its best, "The Clean House" is a peculiar, surreal and sometimes poignant look at the ways we contend with love, jealousy, mortality and our own inconvenient compulsions.

At its worst, it's a self-consciously quirky study in how context is the key to everything -- replete with tedious footnotes, explanatory supertitles and chick-flicky musings.

Director Tony Lea deftly mines the humanity in Ruhl's tale for this Triangle premiere at Deep Dish Theater. And in its stronger moments -- mostly in Act II -- he captures the dark and strange humor as well.

Carole Marcotte is superbly cast as Matilde's prickly boss, Lane, a workaholic surgeon whose surgeon husband leaves her for a patient. (Well, "leaves her" is an overstatement; much of the play's humor derives from the fact that he doesn't leave her. Instead, he naively expects her to harmonize with his newfound soul mate.)

Marcotte ably balances Lane's unpleasant traits with an uneasy vulnerability that makes her a sympathetic and funny protagonist.

Georgia Martin has a more caricaturish role to work with as Lane's sister Virginia, a compulsive neatnik who persuades Matilde to let her secretly take over the cleaning chores. Martin is stuck with some eye-rolling commentary, but she's particularly good with small, revelatory gestures.

North Carolina newcomer Donnie Bledsoe and Argentine actress Delia Rosa Pantaleon make a fun and fitting pair as Lane's husband Charles and his pragmatic and sensual Argentine paramour Ana.

Ashlee Quinones' Matilde is more problematic, in that the role seems to want to find humor in the character's inability to generate humor, except as a strange means to a dark end. Part of Matilde's hurdle is a language barrier: She tells her jokes in Portuguese, which the supertitles neglect to translate (get it?). Part of it is her studied approach to humor.

But in terms of this production, Matilde's biggest impediment is Quinones' focus on her character's Brazilian-accented English. It doesn't trip off Quinones' tongue, and consequently little Matilde says sounds natural. Quinones is extremely expressive in silence, however, and she makes Matilde's bluntness less an offense than an attribute.

Adam Sampieri's sound design underscores the play's juxtaposition of levity and pain, as well as its toast to impropriety. And Jennifer Mann Becker's set design complements Ruhl's exploration of context and disconnect.

As with any joke, whether audiences "get" Ruhl's manner of expression will depend largely on stylistic preferences.

For those who don't, not even her supertitles will help.