Kip Williams’ comedy about superficial lives is full of depth

Donmar Warehouse

⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

Jean Genet’s 1947 play about class jealousy and working class revenge has been reimagined by Kip Williams as a biting satire on social media and influencers. Reviews ranged from 5 stars to 1 star (My roundup is here). The more critical called it ‘superficial’ and ‘exhausting’. I couldn’t disagree more. If you think nothing happens in Waiting For Godot or in plays by Pinter, then fair enough, this may not be for you. For me, it was a searing exposure of the human condition told with acerbic wit and incisive insight.

​For a start, let’s not confuse depicting the performative superficiality of our curated age, with actually being superficial. This production, directed as well as written by Kip Williams, is in the tradition of Theatre of Cruelty and Theatre of Absurdity which Genet was part of. Theatre of Cruelty is intended to break down our distancing intellectual approach to art and jolt us viscerally with the nastiness of human existence. Theatre of the Absurd does as it says on the tin, and is a response to the meaninglessness of existence. These are movements that were born out of the inhumanity of the first and second world wars. It may be that these forms of theatre are less effective today. Perhaps for younger people, human existence doesn’t seem so nasty or absurd, or is simply a given.

The existence we are talking about here is that of two maids, who are also sisters, repeatedly playing a game in which one is their mistress and the other, one of the maids. The ‘servant’ is so verbally and physically abused by the ‘mistress’, that they fantasise about killing her. They are clearly psychologically unhinged.

Both speak in a high speed, declaratory way using the language of a generation brought up on socials. I cannot understate the achievement of Lydia Wilson and Phia Saban in spewing out the words with such pace and venom. The dialogue given to them by Kip Williams is musical, poetic and very funny. I think I need to emphasise that latter adjective, because, on the night I saw The Maids, the audience for the most part received it in silence, and those of us who did laugh were sometimes subjected to puzzled looks. So maybe I am an outlier in my reaction.

Their mistress is a media influencer on matters of beauty and fashion, with 28 million followers. When she finally appears, gloriously played by Yerin Ha, she is a spoilt rich girl, but not the abuser she was made out to be. She is undeniably entitled but it is more the assumption of superiority that makes her obnoxious, and darkly humorous for it. Her conversation is littered with the words ‘literally’ and ‘actually’. She is a drama queen but it’s hard to think she deserves to die.

The thing is, the maids may talk about killing their mistress but they don’t really want to end the dominance of what we may see as fake imagery and the malign influence of social media. They are totally obsessed by it.  They may want to destroy their mistress’s career but they aspire to live her life. They use their mistress’s makeup and wear her clothes. They use apps on their phones to create fake images of themselves. These are images we see on screens at the back, which, I repeat, are crazily funny. The existential futility we observe is a metaphor for the absurdity of all human life- ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing’, as an earlier playwright described it.

Disquieting eroticism

Genet wanted his play to be a comment on the ‘class struggle’ and this version be seen as an allegory of the exploitation of the poor by the rich and the struggle of the working class to overthrow their oppressors. But it seems that the sisters are really using their rituals to abuse each other. Their criticism of each other’s characters may speak to the way the political left tears itself apart, rather than really attacking their rulers.  At times, this interplay is charged with a disquieting eroticism.

There is also a swipe at religion, more obvious perhaps when the play was written. Genet was inspired by the repeated rituals of the church which serve to reinforce the believers’ common faith and their superiority over non believers. So the sisters are in a world of their own, existing in the echo chambers of social media.

A word about the set designed by Rosanna Vize. We begin with the action taking place behind a gauze. So, we are encouraged to see the sisters as in a separate world from us, muted and mediated,. Then the curtain is pulled back to reveal dazzlingly vivid hues, packed with big blooming peonies and other flowers, bathed in eyeball-searing light. Suddenly, their world is alive and overwhelming.

In the story, such as it is, the maids have faked evidence against their mistress’s lover, and he’s now in jail. This is ostensibly to destroy her reputation, which they, for self deceptive reasons, believe will benefit them. Their plan falls apart when the lover is released on bail and their conspiracy looks like being exposed. The only way out seems to be to kill their mistress for real. As the play reaches its climax, the sisters retreat further into their digital fantasy, until it becomes entirely real to them. I don’t want to say more about that but it is very well done and ends literally, and I mean ‘literally’, with a denouement.

Rather than dismissing as superficial the fantasy world of unattainable beauty and imaginary murder, the play seems to suggest it may be a valid way of coping with the futility and nastiness of life.  A way that may be more fun, if less heroic, than being two tramps ever hopeful that Godot will turn up.

The Maids can be seen at The Donmar Warehouse until 29 November 2025. Buy tickets direct from the theatre.

Paul paid for his ticket.

Watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

Read a roundup of other critics’ reviews here