THE MAIDS

THE MAIDS
By Jean Genet. The Tap Gallery (NSW). 15 to 19 March 2012. Director: Steven Hopley. Assistant Director: Lucy Bailes.Costume Design: Rain&Hale. Lighting & Sound: Terrance Maxwell.

When the Mistress is away, her Minions will role-play!

Jean Genet was the bastard son of a working class prostitute. He was homosexual, a thief, a prostitute, a prisoner and a brilliant writer. After having a life prison sentenced commuted, thanks to the intervention of the likes of Picasso and Sartre, Genet became one of France’s most celebrated creators of theatre. He was concerned with the lives of those oppressed by the bourgeoisie because of their class, race or gender. His own life, and his plays, are packed full of anger, fear, lust, duplicity and bliss.

Unfortunately, Enigma’s production of Jean Genet’s 1947 play, The Maids, is not. The Maids concerns two sisters who serve a mistress they both love and despise. They serve her by day and role play the relationships between her and themselves by night. They enjoy treating each other badly. Genet wants us to see the ‘duel’ points of view of the oppressor and the oppressed. This play requires the actors who play the servants, Claire (Emily Elise) and Solange (Alison Lee Rubie), to fully inhabit these characters and beneath the tirade of words, to convey bodies and souls bursting with anger, lust and murderous intent. They fall short of this difficult objective, delivering lines in a manner that does not connect their characters to the inner torment that pervades the story.

To fully demonstrate the concept of role-play integral to this work, Genet had wanted the sisters in service to be played by men. But even when played by women, to plumb the depths of Genet’s message it’s crucial that the role-play is fully realised and the sisters can convincingly role-play each other and their mistress. This is a play about the theatre of life and death. Genet was obsessed with the brevity and fragility of life. Cut flowers are one of the primary symbols of life and death in Genet’s work. They represent a quick beauty that is already in its death throes. Their cloying odour pervades scenes, reminding us of the impending death facing all. Flowers abound in this production and the set is extensive, but the production design adds little to the meaning or actions of the play. It may have worked better with less clutter, allowing a greater focus on the realisation of these deviant sisters.

Brindley Meyer makes a brief appearance as the mistress and does convey some of the grandeur, beauty and shallowness of the mistress so revered and despised by her murderous maids.

Stephen Carnell

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