Good Help Is So Uplifting These Days

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.