The Maids
From Monday 5 November 2001
To Saturday 10 November 2001
Jean Genet
Description
A rare opportunity for Kidderminster audiences to pick up a piece of classic twentieth century drama at the Rose Theatre. The Maids is a dark psychological study of love, hatred and revenge. It deals with the feelings of Claire and Solange, two sisters who serve the same mistress. They are devoted to their employer and yet resent her power and privilege; they love each other and yet feel chained by circumstance into a forced relationship. In their mistress's absence, they ransack her wardrobe and play subversive dressing up games, but while they long for freedom and more say in their lives the play throws up the big question of whether the are ready to go all the way with their game of revenge.
The play was perceived as scandalous when first produced because of its depiction of perverse wishes of human beings: wanting to be dominated but yearning for freedom, wishing for punishment but affronted when it is delivered, concocting heroic images of rebellion in the mind but perhaps not having the courage to make them a reality.
Extract from the Directors Notes
Where to start! Genet's dark and beguiling script has represented a challenge, both in terms of interpretation and in the range of technique and emotion required from the actors. On the surface the story concerns Claire and Solange, in service with a mistress they both love and hate. The have denounced her lover to the police by means of anonymous letters but, on hearing that Monsieur is to be released and being aware of the imminent discovery, they hatch a plot to kill Madame.
That in a nutshell is the story but, for Genet, the heart of the drama is the secret and erotic ceremony played out by the two maids in Madame's absence. It is here that the power of the play is revealed. What attracted Genet to the theatre was the artificiality of the medium. Thus, we are well into the play before we are aware of the reality of each characters identity. But this reality is also a sham as we know that these characters are played by actors people who are pretending to be someone else. To emphasise this pretence, Genet's original idea was to have the parts played by adolescent boys, something he was eventually talked out of by the original director, Louis Jovet. For our production, the levels of deception are presented in another way, we will leave you to judge how successful we have been.