Three’s a crowd: Laura Carmichael (Mistress), Uzo Aduba (Solange) and Zawe Ashton (Claire). Photo credit: Marc Brenner
Theatre: Trafalgar Studios
Play: The Maids
Playwright: Jean Genet (translated by Benedict Andrews and Andrew Upton)
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Review by Joy Francis
French writer Jean Genet’s much lauded play The Maids has been given a bold, edgy, intense and racially-charged makeover by director Jamie Lloyd and translators Benedict Andrews and Andrew Upton.
With a stellar cast of TV icons – Uzo Aduba (Netflix’s Orange is the New Black), Zawe Ashton (Channel 4’s Fresh Meat), along with Downton Abbey star Laura Carmichael, the play is set at full blast.
The Maids is loosely based on the notorious case of the Papin sisters who, in 1933, murdered their employer and her daughter. Relocated to America, Claire (Ashton) and older sister Solange (Aduba) are repressed and oppressed maids to a wealthy Mistress (Carmichael). Confined to the attic, pitifully paid with minimal contact with the outside world, they are dysfunctional and co-dependent.
Its dazzlingly cinematic opening, framed by inventive lighting, illuminating fuschia-pink paper petals cascading from the rafters like rain, puts you on alert. When the atmospheric thudding dance track kicks in, you know something memorable is going to happen.
When the petals settle we see Claire, resplendent in a red dress, courtesy of Alexander McQueen. A shoulder length blond wing clings precariously to her head as she gesticulates wildly in an exaggerated voice, mimicking her absent Mistress.
Sister Solange, sporting cornrows and a scowl, plays the part of Claire in a game of role play which swings from farcical high camp to the disturbing and claustrophobic. Internal fears, fantasies, rage and bitterness are batted back and forth, channelled through a carefully crafted script, memorised and performed repeatedly as a form of emotional release.
Claire’s portrayal of her Mistress is in turn monstrous and hilarious. Narcissistic, foul-mouthed, materialistic and ungrateful, Claire revels in the obscenities she liberally spits out in character. Gyrating her hips while clutching onto her blonde wing, she decries her foul smelly maids. “You only exist because of me. Hate is grinding in your gut,” Claire screams at Solange while laughing hysterically.
The lines of who is really being insulted and despised become increasingly blurred. Just before the denouement, the mock murder of the Mistress, a kitchen timer’s piercing alarm shatters the illusion. Forced to face their uninspired reality, they reclaim their matching black and white uniforms. Claire’s fear of her Mistress takes over as she praises her absent qualities as if citing the Hail Mary in fear of eternal damnation.
A bubbling cauldron of fury: Uzo Aduba (Solange). Photo credit: Marc Brenner
As for Solange, she is a bubbling cauldron of fury, reluctantly restoring the shambolic room back to its pristine state. But it’s Claire, the seemingly more vulnerable and fragile one, who boasts about single-handedly securing her master’s arrest on trumped up charges. She taunts Solange for missing an opportunity to kill her Mistress for real, which sticks in the craw of them both. Their craving to be free of the daily tyranny has rendered them almost impotent.
Claire and Solange’s emotional damage and fear and loathing of their mistress is palpable. As is their enslavement as they wave like children to the outside world from the locked window. Also apparent is their complex love/hate relationship with each other as they jockey for power and control in a life where they have none.
When their Mistress does appear, like a starry, inflated and overpaid reality star, you feel you already know her. Before long, Claire’s impersonation of her Mistress is validated as she swings from superficial generosity, melodramatic posturings and mistrust to ridicule, racial superiority and degradation.
In one breath she donates her designer dress and fur to the sisters. In another, she cannot tell them apart. In one breath she describes them as family – “You are like daughters to me”. In another, she berates them for not having to buy the clothes she gifted them while snatching the items back. The Mistress’s cutting words soils the sisters, forcing an ending that is powerful and tragic.
Genet’s, play, written in 1947, is still relevant. Jamie Lloyd, Andrew Upton and Benedict Andrews add another layer of intrigue by making the maids black. The historical shadow of the shameful slave experience in the US permeates this play, along with a scathing commentary on the hidden experience of an estimated 53 million domestic workers based in private households globally.
Aduba and Ashton are terrifyingly glorious. They throw themselves, and their emotions, around the stage with great skill, commitment, abandon and confidence. Aduba’s Solange is all misdirected hate and delusion while Ashton’s Claire is a trembling bundle of physical and mental instability and vulnerability.
This leaves Carmichael’s Mistress with a great deal to live up to. Thankfully she rises to the occasion. Shedding all remnants of Downton’s Edith, she is an immaculate and cold creature, randomly firing bullets of class and racial imperialism. She makes the Mistress easy to dislike.
Jaw-dropping and bold design and performances. Laura Carmichael (mistress) and Uzo Aduba (Solange). Photo credit: Marc Brenner
Jamie Lloyd’s direction is imaginative, captivating – and challenging, both for the audience and the actors. With an open plan stage shaped like a four poster, the audience sit on two sides of it. Polly Bennett’s movement work is impressive – a central fight scene is unneverving. Jon Clark’s fantastical lighting and Soutra Gilmour’s beautiful and baffling set design (the stage, with its hidden compartments, is an Ikea fan’s dream) are to be applauded.
The Maids is stupendous, jaw-dropping and bold, though occasionally heavy handed. With the intensity level set at 2000 megawatts, it will not be to everyone’s taste. To me, it’s unmissable.
The Maids is at Trafalgar Studios until 21 May 2016.