As it unfolds on the screen, Kira and Mads's relationship could be described as the warped tango of a mad housewife and her control freak of a husband.

And Karin Davie's convolutions of zipper-trimmed foam rubber, fabric, paper and Mylar evoke the mad housewife as an Abstract Expressionist sculptor.

She got to her knees, dipped the hem of her skirt in the puddle of liquid that was rapidly running away down the cracks, dabbing at it like some mad housewife cleaning up.

It's like the diary of a mad housewife.

"Ibsen did not write a British bodice-ripper about an inappropriate, infantilized mad housewife," scolded Linda Winer of Newsday.

Ms. Ryan calls them plays on "Mom's style" - if Mom was a mad housewife who kept a diary in detritus.

Ms. Hess traverses the route of a mad housewife - by turns manic, high pitched and out of control - as well as controlling and enabling.

Walter is killing himself earning his salary so that she can stay home all day and be a mad housewife.

Ms. Chase, in particular, seemed to be going nowhere until her sound effects announced that the character she portrayed in a narcissistic solo was a cross between a mad housewife and Anna Karenina.

"How did a mad housewife become a star?"