The Maids Writers’ Theatre’
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Genet’s own tale had many of the same elements as the play. A bastard, given up for adoption as a baby and packed off to a reformatory as a teen, he spent most of his first four decades either in jail or doing what was required to get there. He was a thief, a vagrant, a prostitute, and a sexual criminal by virtue of his homosexuality. But he also became a writer, and, perhaps more important, a persona: the existential outlaw. Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and others picked up on him, made him their Neal Cassady, and stepped in to save him when he was on the verge of going to prison for a life term.
The Maids was Genet’s first play. It opens in a posh bedroom occupied by two women—one called Claire, dressed in a modest black-and-white maid’s uniform, the other, addressed as the Mistress, wearing only a slip. Arrogant and verbally abusive, the Mistress rips into Claire as Claire helps her dress. Before long, however, it becomes evident that Claire isn’t just a proletarian punching bag. She makes an odd stand in favor of the red gown, forbidding the Mistress to wear the white. The balance of power between the two women seesaws strangely, as if there’s a subtext we haven’t been let in on.
Elizabeth Laidlaw generates some heat as Solange, but the overall atmosphere is grim—at least until Niki Lindgren shows up as the real Mistress. Interestingly, Lindgren has a background in comedy (she’s been a member of the Second City E.T.C. ensemble), and she brings a playfulness to her role that lends the show a welcome frisson. But not enough to make it French.v
