Writer: Jean Genet
Adaptor and Director: Kip Williams
“Everybody ought to have a maid”, asserted Stephen Sondheim famously in song, but the great lyricist could well have had second thoughts after seeing French writer Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids, which is revived here. The tale of two mischievous, murderous chambermaids was originally seen as a parable about a crumbling class system, but adaptor and director Kip Williams packs it with up-to-date references and transforms it into a satire on the cult of celebrity worship.
When we first encounter the sisters Claire and Solange, they are stepping aside from their daily duties in the boudoir of their employer, “Madame”. They take turns to impersonate Madame, they wear her expensive clothes, they scheme to undermine her latest boyfriend, who is facing trial on fraud charges, and they plot her murder. Madame is expected home soon, and her fans are congregating on the street below; like them, the sisters adore Madame, but they also loathe her in equal measure.
Madame eventually arrives, frantically worried about the fate of her boyfriend, and she is every bit as ghastly as the sisters’ impersonations have warned us, cruelly taunting each of her maids in turn. The point is made that all three characters are essentially the same and confrontations continue in a similar vein, whichever two of the three are on stage. Herein lies the play’s chief problem – repetition. Almost every scene begins to feel like a re-run of the one that preceded it.
Williams never asks the audience to invest in the characters emotionally, sustaining a surreal feel to the drama throughout. Exceptionally forceful performances by Yerin Ha, Phia Shaban and Lydia Wilson energise the production and lift it out of the play’s most sticky patches. Together, the three young actors resemble a group of lovestruck schoolgirls forming a fan club for, say, a pop star, although it is always clear that evil lies on the horizon.
This is a very grand production of a very small play, one that, arguably, could have been staged just as effectively at a small fringe venue with no formal set. As it is, set designer Rosanna Vize pulls out all the stops with a stunning boudoir bedecked with all things beige. The opening scene is performed entirely behind net curtains, thereby mystifying (and irritating) the audience and giant mirrors double as video screens, playing their part in Williams’ assault on our senses. However, there are concerns that gimmicks are being used to divert attention from the play’s shortcomings and paper over obvious cracks.
There is much to enjoy in Williams’ radical re-working of Genet’s obscure classic, but 100 minutes of this weird and often anarchic spectacle is more than enough. Nonetheless, the points that it makes about the dangers of modern celebrity culture hit home strongly.
Runs until 29 November 2925
