The Maids

Jean Genet's "The Maids", has been a staple in many a company's play list. Loosely based on the true story of the Papin sisters - French live-in maids who, after years of abuse, brutally murdered their mistress and her daughter - Genet takes the story and weaves a tragic and tangled web of illusion versus reality.

Each evening, Solange and Claire, two maids, re-enact their fantasies of abuse and vengeance on their exuberant and demanding mistress, each of them enthralled in a spiral of ever-deepening mental anguish. Until one evening something happens that puts them at risk of being found out...

With themes as the blurring between reality and illusion and the nature of identity, "The Maids" also explores the excesses of class and authority, culminating in a tense and dark psychological drama that dives deep into the shadowy crevasses of two fractured minds.

From the point of performance, "The Maids" is rich, deep, dark, challenging, edgy and not to be underestimated. Emotions run very high, in all directions and for each role, and each part has a physicality that is vital to the play.

This is a 16+ production.