Blanchett, Huppert are up to task of Genet’s ‘Maids’
Challenging play gets players fit for the job
NEW YORK “I hate you,” Solange, the elder of two sisters, tells Claire, the younger, in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Jean Genet’s The Maids. To which Claire responds, “I hate you back.”
But the women actually love each other — too much, they’ll admit, and in a complicated way that involves elaborate role playing and a steady stream of insults.
Claire and Solange — played here, respectively, by Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert — have no one but each other and the wealthy, soulless materialist who employs them. As a result, in this bleak, searingly classconscious tragicomedy — first produced in 1947, and inspired by a real-life case in which two sisters killed the woman providing them domestic work and her daughter — Genet’s siblings form an interdependent bond fueled by emotional and sexual sadomasochism.
This staging is directed by Benedict Andrews and features a new adaptation by Andrews and Andrew Upton (Blanchett’s husband and STC’s artistic director), using a translation from the original French by Julie Rose. The play is set in the mistress’s private quarters, which designer Alice Babidge has given a distinctly modern twist.
A large screen above the stage zeroes in on various trappings of luxury — shoes, flowers, jewelry — as the women speak and move about, emphasizing the maids’ constant, torturous exposure to things they will never possess. But the screen also zeroes in on the women’s faces and their often frantic body language.
Veering from frenzied excitement to disgust and despair, Blanchett and Huppert throw vanity to the wind, savoring the dark, sad humor in their grind- ings and grimaces.
Blanchett is particularly resourceful, and harrowing, in showing us Claire’s desperation, which extends to using her mistress’s personal items to land the master in legal trouble. Facing her employer (Elizabeth Debicki, in a deliciously vulgar performance) after her plot has been foiled, if not exposed, Blanchett’s Claire crumples, and the thinness of her fortitude is made devastatingly plain.
Huppert doesn’t bring the same range, or clarity, to her role. Flapping her still-agile limbs about, she provides a droll foil to Claire’s fragile strength; but a lengthy monologue that requires Solange to summon her own ferocity doesn’t pack the punch that it should.
Still, it’s a pleasure to see great actresses tackle challenging material with such un-self-conscious devotion.