As the lights go up at the start of The Maids, two servants dressed in black bodysuits, ballerina skirts, fishnet stockings and impossibly high stilettos hobble across the stage. Their twisted arms and claw-like hands that seem crippled with arthritis extend at odd angles.
But in the opening tableau, it’s to the arresting faces that the eye is drawn. Their two visages are so caked in makeup they transform into monstrous, mask-like parodies of themselves.
In Jean Genet’s 1947 play, two domestics spend their free time playing dress-up in their mistress’ boudoir. In this powerful statement against servitude and exploitation, Claire and Solange repeatedly enact a twisted recreation of their relationship with their mistress, referred to as Madame. Taking turns, the sisters act out their degradation and then rehearse Madame’s murder.
The spectator can almost taste their poisonous hatred for Madame. While Claire role-plays Madame, she primps her cheeks and demands a dress from Solange.
“You smell like an animal,” screams Claire when Solange touches her.
Later Solange eloquently states her position as she slings invective at an absent Madame.
“She loves us like her bidet … It’s easy to speak of kindness when you are beautiful and rich, but what if you are only the maid?’
As their strange homoerotic rituals unfold, it quickly becomes apparent the two sisters are seriously unhinged and the audience becomes a complicit voyeur in their sadomasochistic rituals.
Inspired by a true story of domestic violence from France in the 1930s, Genet deliberately blurs the maids’ sexual identity, and their games suggest that the class struggle is largely a performance. By the end, the spectator wrestles to understand what is going on.
Depending on which source you read, the playwright once specified that the roles must be played be either men or boys. In her fetishized rendition, director Andrea Beça adds a ghostly echo of gender bending to the three-hander.
While former St. Albert resident Louise Casemore Large and Sarah Horsman strut their ample freakishness as Claire and Solange, Zachary Parsons-Lozinski is delightfully self-absorbed and patronizing as Madame.
Chief among the performances is Horsman’s interpretation of a volcanic Solange. More homicidal than her sister, Horsman’s interpretation of Solange is one for the awards. Whether she shambles across the stage plotting murder or dominates her sister, Horsman squeezes every ounce of life out of this complicated, obsessed and hugely deranged character.
Large is quite convincing as the meeker, younger Claire and her transformation from a demanding, petulant mistress to mousy servant is so complete she almost withers in size. When Claire tries to coax Madame into drinking a cup of poisonous tea, she raises the ante and the game morphs into madness.
The roles of Claire and Solange are extraordinarily physically, emotionally and psychologically demanding, and Horsman and Large create psychosexual personalities that mesmerize.
A great deal of praise also needs to go to Beça for careful rhythms and pacing that created just the right tensions.
All in all, The Maids is a play that will stay with you for a while.
Review
The Maids<br />Cowardly Kiss Theatre<br />Runs until April 21<br />Catalyst Theatre<br />8529 Gateway Blvd.
