Dim the lights, hide the evidence, and slip into someone else's best clothes: it's time for rituals. Jean Genet's dark tale of fantasy and paranoia, The Maids, peers behind closed doors into the tormented lives of servants on the verge of cracking, and the masters who unwittingly live alongside them. Escapist Productions's version of this 1947 absurdist classic takes on a work by one of the most unique and defiant voices of 20th-century theater, playing it out with great ambitions though somewhat mixed results. The Maids is the story of two sisters, Solange and Claire, who serve together in the same house. Their work has pushed them to the edge of their wits, so they dream up a desperate scheme to frame their master and murder their mistress. While the mistress is out, they play at the murder, enacting it themselves. When she returns, however, and it comes to the moment to act, they bungle their carefully laid plans and cannot accomplish their revenge. The mistress escapes, suspecting nothing, but the maids' plan is already unraveling at a dangerous pace, and the two sisters are left alone again, fearing for the worst.
The Escapist production at the Chocolate Factory
