'The Maids' Off-Broadway review — an 80-year-old classic enters the social media age

Read our review of The Maids off Broadway, a new version of Jean Genet's play adapted and directed by Tony Award nominee Kip Williams at St. Ann's Warehouse.

Summary

• The Maids follows two employees of a glamorous Madame who fantasize revenge on her
• The show updates the 1947 play for the social media age by making Madame a fashion influencer and using digital technology
• The video design often detracts from the onstage performances and is a heavy-handed way to suggest the play's modern relevance
• The show is recommended for fans of the original play or of adapter/director Kip Williams' tech-forward The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway last season

As a friend once commented, plays are just movies now. Actors play to cameras, not people. Such is the case in director/writer Kip Williams’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids, where Snapchat filters and front-facing video emitting from wardrobe mirrors are expected to do the work of the French dramatist’s original language mashed up awkwardly with contemporary slang ("unhinged," "gagged," "iconic").

The video design by Zakk Hein comprises only a third of the show. But its sensibility — simultaneously unserious and deeply intellectual — bleeds into the rest of Williams's production, which appears to be searching for the right amount of audience alienation and invitation. The cast all have moments in which they telegraph a bit of naturalism — a “literally” here, a “filth doesn’t love other filth” there — but generally, lines land with a hint of irony. It leaves one with the impression that this production has only one foot in the door of sincerity.

Genet’s 1947 play is about two servants, Claire (Lydia Wilson) and Solange (Phia Saban), and the wealthy and aristocratic Madame (Bridgerton's Yerin Ha). The basic premise remains: The maids play out their fantasies of riches and revenge while Madame is out, and her return presents the opportunity to enact real vengeance. But now Madame is a lifestyle and fashion influencer, with a closet of designer clothes and a phone camera to cultivate the illusion of her glamour while cementing how out-of-reach it is to her employees.

Williams, in his desire to update Genet’s text for the now, loads the script with name-drops and brand references: Demna (Gucci's new artistic director), Anna (as in Wintour), Kylie (as in Jenner), Prada, Balenciaga. Using Genet's work as clay, Williams has built out his trio as young women of today, with their vocal tics, hobbies, and fascinations. But it all feels reverse-engineered, its attempts at blending social, political, artistic sensibilities from past and present at times clunky.

It’s not enough for the maids to play dress-up in Madame's crimson Schiaparelli dress or prance around the room they’re supposed to clean, putting on their employer’s haughty voice. They’re now posting through it. Claire and Solange pretend to be Madame, playing with various face filters and wielding their phones like daggers during filming. Their image appears on the mirror doors of Madame’s tall closet, faces glowering at the audience. Eighty years removed from the play’s original context, the digital world has just filtered the original show’s anxieties through a cracked prism.

Genet potently unpacks how much of Solange and Claire’s self-conception is wrapped up in the reality of their work and the feelings of nothingness perpetuated by their dehumanization. The impulse to play with how the internet age exacerbates and complicates those concepts is tantalizing.

But in practice, the big screen diverts attention away from the performers and diffuse their energy, even in St. Anne’s Warehouse’s approximately 350-seat space. Its Brechtian gambit comes at the expense of a sense of tangibility for audiences.

Even at its most heightened moments, The Maids never captures the electrifying danger that comes with witnessing either the consequences of the characters’ behavior or something revolutionary being done with the theatrical form. The production is so concerned with making itself contemporary, in transforming the text into a treatise on the artificiality of our current age, that it’s made no room for anyone’s soul.

The Maids summary

When their Madame is away, Solange and Claire dress up in their boss’s couture clothes and role-play both being scolded by her and enacting revenge on her. When Madame’s boyfriend is embroiled in a scandal that lands him in prison, the time to turn their dangerous game of vengeance edges closer to becoming reality.

What to expect at The Maids

Flowers adorn the cream-colored room, with a soft carpet, makeup stand in the center, and tall closet mirror doors packed with high fashion garments. Scenic designer Rosanna Vize also shrouds the stage in a white veil for the first 15-20 minutes of the show, as if the room is partially shielded from onlookers with window curtains. The pre-show playlist, featuring “Stateside” by PinkPantheress and “Fame is a Gun” by Addison Rae, sets the mood for a production that seeks to be fluent in zillennial-speak.

What audiences are saying about The Maids

Audiences at early performances of The Maids off Broadway have shared mixed responses on various online forums.

• “I, too, would die for Yerin Ha she’s so ethereal.” - Catherine Addison on Mezzanine
• “First, this show starts at an 11 and never lets up for a second. It’s 100+ minutes of people just frantically screaming at each other. Second, the dependence on the screens and augmented reality was at points literally nauseating.” - Reddit user u/AhoyMatteyPDX
• “The acting was great but the show went on to long at the end and the filters/screens became more of a distraction and annoyance.” - Reddit user u/Downtown-Impress-538

Who should see The Maids

• Genet’s legendary text has become a part of the canon, with its canny take on labor, roleplay, and gendered power dynamics cementing it as one of theatre’s most iconoclastic works.
• Kip Williams reunites with video designer Zakk Hein here, so fans of their work on The Picture of Dorian Gray will no doubt be intrigued by how the production's technology impacts its point of view about identity in a digital world.
• Tony Award-winning costume designer Marg Horwell, also from the Dorian Gray team, crafts gorgeous pieces that both telegraph the social set that Madame is part of and act as clever commentary on fashion’s role in creating an idealized self.

Learn more about The Maids off Broadway

Kip Williams is eager to make The Maids urgently relevant, using the spectacle of video and the grating cadence of influencer lingo to do so, and therefore locking Genet’s text into a world of the unnatural and simulated. As a result, the production is cold, unable to penetrate more deeply into the sadness and emptiness of its characters’ lives.

Learn more and get The Maids tickets on New York Theatre Guide. The Maids is at St. Ann's Warehouse through June 14.

Photo credit: The Maids off Broadway. (Photos by Julieta Cervantes)