Last Updated on January 11, 2025
Jean Genet’s classic play is staged off West End
In its restrictive space, where even the toilet entrance is eccentrically on the stage itself, Jermyn Street Theatre is a highly suitable space to put on Jean Genet’s The Maids. Sound effects (by Joe Dines) convey tension and claustrophobia extremely well; heightened moments give the feeling of blood rushing through your ears. In a basement near Piccadilly, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was hearing tube trains beneath. It all added to the discombobulation. The theatre, holding just seventy, is so intimate it feels like a game of Tetris getting in and out.
The Maids, Genet’s classic 1947 play which scandalised audiences, owes much to the grisly Papin sisters murder case in 1930s France. The main protagonists are two sisters, Solange and Claire, acting out a fantasy game in which they take it in turns to dress up as their rich mistress employer. She eventually appears in the middle segment, although her lover, just arrested, after accusations made by an anonymous letter writer, remains unseen throughout.
The timeless theme of The Maids is class power struggle; Genet’s characters flip between master and servant roles with obvious eroticism. This version introduces the dynamic of the Mistress being a younger black woman with white servants. The Maids shares with Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-winning film, Parasite, how the upper classes feel physical disgust of their subordinates and – more obviously – servants plotting to take over their masters’ possessions. To paraphrase, one of the best lines is “She loves us like she loves her bidet.”
Most of the play has Solange (Anna Popplewell, Chronicles of Narnia films, Disney) sparring with Claire (Charlie Oscar, Plaza Suite, Savoy Theatre). Initially, Solange pretends to be Claire, whilst the real Claire flounces and sneers in her Mistress’s clothes and jewellery. After several minutes the masquerade starts to slip, as they each fall in and out of character berating each other. The physical tussles between the sisters had me worried someone really had been hit in the face with a shoe. At ninety minutes with no interval, this production is considerably shorter, far less earnest and a smoother translation than the somewhat painful 1970s film starring Susannah York and Glenda Jackson.
Genet’s lines give plenty of scope for innuendo and humour which were conveyed with a mostly light-hearted atmosphere. The funniest moments come from the Mistress (Carla Harrison-Hodge, Machinal, Old Vic), although knowing that she would be absent for the last segment, I was sad her time on stage is the shortest. If the play-acting between the sisters begins to pall, the Mistress livens things up whilst she is there.
To familiarise myself, I read most of the play in French. I remain confused about the dynamic between the sisters and the unseen lover, who really wants to murder who, and what really happens at the end. I’m left concluding Genet meant The Maids to be a post-modern Russian doll piece with layers of intrigue ripe for individual interpretation and that’s a quality I always enjoy in a work.
Although here it felt slightly off. A moment of ecstasy that never arrives. Genet’s text ends with ironic suggestiveness, here that line is skated over and switched for another one that feels, well, just random. The Papin sisters – who each claimed sole responsibility for their killings – were discovered in their locked bedroom, naked, clutching in bed together, covered in blood. The Maids ends too ambiguously, there is no satisfying finish. It’s not necessarily a fault of this production. Modern audiences, numbed by Fifty Shades and slasher movies may find The Maids relatively innocent, even if the flattish erotic charge between the sisters and the Mistress had been made more powerful. Genet did not include props of rubber gloves, shoe action, fur and stockings (the latter unmentioned in this version) to the story by chance. He set a tone.
Costumes by Cat Fuller are mostly contemporary – the Mistress wears a short skirt and knee-high boots under the fur coat – but there’s a disconnect in that the translation by Martin Crimp retains references to furriers and sending Solange out in the street to flag down a taxi, despite a functioning telephone being present. Some suspension of belief is required. With tickets at £22 and Piccadilly Circus location, I’m prepared to forgive this. Overall, this is a fun, easy to watch version of Genet’s play, but an opportunity to be edgier was missed.
The Maids is the first co-production between Jermyn Street Theatre and Reading Rep Theatre. It is directed by Annie Kershaw (Girl in the Machine, Young Vic), recipient of The Young Vic’s Genesis Future Directors award, and who from 2023-24 was Jermyn Street Theatre’s Carne Deputy Director Scheme. The Maids will be on at Jermyn Street Theatre until 22 Jan after which it will transfer to Reading Rep Theatre from 28 Jan to 8 Feb 2025. Jermyn Street Theatre’s spring 2025 season includes The Importance of Being Oscar which has enjoyed a successful run already at Reading Rep Theatre.
The Maids
Jermyn Street Theatre
16B Jermyn Street
London SW1Y 6ST
Tel: 020 72872875
Leave a Reply