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by Jean Genet, translated by Martin Crimp,

directed by Brendan Healy

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto

September 22-October 9, 2011

“Maids to Order”

Buddies in Bad Times has opened its 20011/12 season with Jean Genet’s The Maids (Les Bonnes) from 1947, one of the central texts of queer drama and of 20th-century drama in general.  Healy guides a top-notch cast through his elegant, stylized approach to the play, one totally in keeping with its theme of ritual.

The play was inspired by a real murder case in Paris in 1933 in which two sisters who worked as maids murdered their employer and her daughter.  Such a crime had a special resonance in France that had seen one of the world’s most famous rebellions of the poor against the rich.  While the critique of social inequality inherent in the subject still informs the play, Genet’s focus is trained on the fantasy world of the two sisters as produced by a life of servitude and disdain.

Though the two sisters Solange (Diane D’Aquila) and Claire (Ron Kennell) are ideal maids by day, every night when their mistress, Madame (Maria Ricossa), is away, they rehearse the day’s events with Claire playing Madame and Solange playing Claire.  Murdering Madame is always the conclusion.  Their nightly “ceremony”, as they call it, has gained some urgency since they wrote anonymous letters to the police implicating Madame’s boyfriend in a theft he did not commit.  They know that’s only a matter of time before the police trace the handwriting to them.  There is also the danger that in playing their game the maids will get too caught up in their roles as victim and killer.

Genet’s intention was that the three women would be played by three adolescent boys, thus adding a further layer of role-playing to the action.  Director Brendan Healy makes a nod in this direction by casting Ron Kennell as Claire.  Doing this, in fact, makes the play even richer than Genet’s idea since we don’t know whether he is addressed as feminine by Solange and Madame because he is a gay, effeminate male or whether Healy is using a male Claire as a distancing device.  Since designer Julie Fox has given Claire trousers instead of a skirt for his maid’s outfit, Healy likely seeks both effects.

The performances are uniformly excellent.  It is great to see Kennell finally given a major role after years of subsidiary parts at Stratford.  You might think that there is no one less likely to be cast as feminine, but Kennell’s change in tone of voice and repertoire of gestures makes him surprisingly believable.  Diane D’Aquila is unusual in having a background in both naturalistic and non-naturalistic acting styles.  She neatly pitches her performance more towards the first when she is playing Solange and more toward the second when she is playing Claire in the “ceremony”.  We might have thought that Claire’s impersonation of Madame was extravagant, but when Maria Ricossa appears, we see at once how deadly accurate he was.  In a play about role-playing, Ricossa perfectly captures Madame’s penchant for self-dramatization.  In the mirrored world of the play, Claire is imitating a woman who is nothing but a collection of dramatic poses.  Ricossa also conveys beautifully how fundamentally insulting Madame’s unconsciously patronizing attitude to her servants really is. 

Fox’s starkly symmetrical all-pink set reflects the multiple symmetries in Genet’s plot and the over-the-top femininity of Madame.  Kimberley Purtell’s lighting is, as usual, exquisite. 

If there is a flaw in the production it is when Healy allows Claire, whom we suppose to be dead, to rise from Madame’s bed and stand by Solange during her final soliloquy.  By so doing, Healy emphasizes the play-as-play which is already implicit in Genet’s heightened language.  However, he also destroys Genet’s carefully construct scenario where the maids confuse reality and illusion.  Healy’s ploy prevents us from asking the question central to the conclusion whether Solange and Claire have acted consciously or unconsciously in their actions. 

This error aside, this production of The Maids is one of the best you are ever likely to see, since Healy makes clear that the maids can imagine a revolution of servant against master but cannot see past master and servant as a social structure.  As Genet suggests, a real revolution demands envisioning another structure altogether.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Ron Kennell and Maria Ricossa. ©2011 Jeremy Mimnagh.

For tickets, visit www.buddiesinbadtimes.com.