Liz Lauren
Rebecca Hurd (left) plays the mistress who torments her domestic servant Claire (Melisa Pereyra).
In 1933, two French domestics grabbed headlines when they brutally killed their mistress and her daughter. Using a kitchen knife and a hammer, the Papin Sisters hacked away at their employers’ faces until they were unrecognizable and then gouged out their eyes. The incident was seen by intellectuals at the time as a gruesome act of class warfare — the inevitable rage of powerless servants lashing out at their bourgeoisie masters. Many scholars believe the incident inspired Jean Genet to write The Maids, a similarly brutal tale of two sisters trapped in the employ of a mistress they despise. On stage in American Players Theatre’s Touchstone through October 5, the production is a harrowing study of delusion, desperation, violence and the manipulation of power.
The play opens in Madame’s bedroom, a place of stark contrasts thanks to Yu Shibagaki’s evocative set design. The latest high-tech gadgets in shiny stainless steel decorate the cold, minimalist apartment. A white chiffon scarf is draped artfully over a stiff leather chair. Vases full of delicate white flowers soften the hard edges of concrete walls that, if they weren’t so on-trend, would better fit a prison or a tomb.
There we meet the sisters, young Latina domestics whose only escape is to take turns dressing and behaving like their casually cruel mistress, acting out fantasies of revenge. Under the astute direction of Gigi Buffington, tensions and emotions begin at a fever pitch when the lights come up and only intensify, as the wild-eyed women are pushed to their breaking points.
Core company member Melisa Pereyra and APT newcomer Andrea San Miguel are a frightening pair as they go toe-to-toe. The women stroke each other’s hair one moment, only to spit on, choke, shove and sexually taunt each other the next. The sound of a ticking clock underscores their limited time to play with Madame’s gloves, gowns and shoes — until she returns to the house and the girls must return to their roles of kind, obedient and meek maids.
When she finally appears, Madame (Rebecca Hurd, with a breezy insincerity) plays with the maids’ emotions, offering extravagant gifts that are quickly snatched away. She amuses herself by dressing them up like dolls, then quickly denounces them as incompetent. This pileup of humilations tramples the girls’ spirits.
Though the production elements are all outstanding, this is an extremely difficult play to watch — particularly as the maids turn on each other in the final scene. (On the night I was there, a fellow audience member actually shielded his eyes and ears from the violence onstage.)
By thrusting the play into a charged modern context where both race and class are flashpoints, we are reminded of the rage against injustice that has led to the riots in Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement.
It is 95 minutes of unrelenting horror that doesn’t even pause for an intermission. Perhaps the bravest thing we can do is refuse to look away.
