Although he wrote Deathwatch first, The Maids was the first Jean Genet play to be performed (in 1947) – and now it is the first play to grace Wellington Museum’s new performing arts space, FLUX.

The four substantial structural posts in the FLUX space dictate an in-the-round or three-sided thrust setting. For The Maids, spatial designer Patrick Carroll goes for the latter, featuring a king-sized bed in the centre and incorporating an actual window in the back wall. Lighting Designer Janis Cheng cleverly paints the floor and walls with shadows thrown by the posts. Actual doors deliver resonant slams to herald arrivals.

Inspired by the actual murder, in 1933, of a wealthy woman and her daughter by the Papin sisters, it’s tempting to consider a wider historical context for Genet’s play. Could it be an allegory for the Nazi occupation? Is he suggesting it’s time for another revolution? (Marie Antoinette does get a mention.)

Given he was gay, when it was illegal and clandestine, does his portrait of inequality reflect the disenfranchisement of all minority groups who clearly aspire to what the ‘haves’ enjoy? Genet did suggest the roles could be played by men in drag, so the two housemaids could be seen to aspire to Madame’s gender status.

He does specify that the housemaid sisters are in their early and mid-30s while Madame is 25, which adds being ordered about by one’s junior to the ignominy. (It occurs to me now that calling her ‘Madame’ is unusual, given that’s usually reserved for married or very senior women.)

Every generation rediscovers The Maids. As a psycho-sociological case study, consciously theatrical in its existential exploration of class-based status via fantasy role-play, its fundamentals can stand being played out in new contexts. Even before this production begins, a state-of-the-art cellphone on the bed – which will play music (faintly), sound its alarm and receive a phone call – tells us this will not be a period piece, despite being presented in a museum.  

Indeed director Samuel Phillips and this company eschew French Maid costumes and posh versus working class accents. All three actresses speak in their own Kiwi accents and the maids wear contemporary casual clothes. The most obvious visual difference is that Claire and Solange (the maids) are black while Madame is white, which can be seen as serving class v ruling class; disadvantaged v privilege. The nature of their actions and interactions could just as easily be found in a girls’ boarding school.

The substantive action involves fantasy roleplay: the younger sister, Claire (Batanai Mashingaidze) plays an authoritarian ‘Madame’ while Solange (Keagan Carr Fransch) is her maid, invariably addressed as ‘Claire’ by ‘Madame’ which can get a bit confusing if we’re not concentrating. It soon becomes apparent they are rehearsing a scenario that will result in their murdering Madame – and both manifest sado-masochistic thrills in the process. They also drop into troughs of despond. And as they – and we – become absorbed in the make-believe, the lines between fantasy and reality become engagingly blurred.

That said, one of the most impressive things about their highly credible interactions is the way they drop out of character to instruct, correct or comment then snap back into role. Genet doesn’t spoon-feed us by explaining what’s going on and discovering it from the clues embedded in these beautifully modulated performances adds greatly to our pleasure.

Genet also surprises us with a Madame who, far from being the haughty gorgon we might expect, is fragile, vulnerable, needy and girlishly excitable at the prospect of being reunited with her lover. Without resorting to upper-class elocution to convey it, Stevie Hancox-Monk epitomises Madame’s almost innocent limitations of entitlement and privilege. She gives frocks to her maids in the hope of gaining their friendship rather than as an act of dismissive patronage.

But the issue is not one of personalities so much as freedom v servitude. Madame clearly has more choice in her life than her maids do and her taking it for granted only adds insult to injury. The question is: does she therefore deserve to die? And if the sisters do succeed in making their fantasy a reality, what will they gain?

It has been said that sanity is the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. The play’s ending – which I will not reveal here – does leave us to determine whether it was consciously intended or a tragically deluded mistake. Either way this astutely rendered production of The Maids is well worth seeing. 

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