| Genet Well-Served |
At Theatr Pena |
| Theatr Pena & Riverfront- The Maids , Torch Studio , June 23, 2012 |
Carl Lavery is the leading authority on Jean Genet in Wales. In his 2010 book “the Politics of Jean Genet's Late Theatre” he forcibly removes the writer from his customary critical setting of existentialism or gender analysis. Of “the Maids” a 2006 director wrote “All three need to produce themselves sensing the threat to their own nullity. This fear generates banal/familiar stereotypes to cling to”. When Neil Bartlett staged the play in a hotel it was totally in his own idiom. Lavery persuasively relocates Genet right at the heart of France’s turbulent politics. “The Maids” he writes “is the first of Genet's texts to function as an overtly political allegory...the difficulties of producing a revolutionary break with any form of established order.”A key plot point is the imminent return of Madame’s lover, who has been briefly detained on the grounds of the maids’ anonymous letters. The anonymous letter held in 1947 a resonance in France now lost on a contemporary audience. As a plot device it has a pedigree in fiction from Tom Sawyer’s exuberant innocence to its centrality in Agatha Christie’s “the Moving Finger.” In France letters of accusation are the centre of “Le Corbeau” made four years before “the Maids”. That film landed director Henri-Georges Clouzot in deep trouble. Anonymous denunciation to the Gestapo was a sinister feature of the Occupation period and its inclusion is indicator of the richness that permeates Genet’s creation. Director Erica Eirian has drawn on the resources of the admirably conceived Theatr Pena to make her production very French. Buddug Verona James is a sultry chanteuse singing to Joe Corbett’s accordion, that instrument that makes music of an equal levity and elusive wistfulness. James’ worldliness and cropped hair modernity hair is in striking contrast to the Maids when they make their entrance. Christine Pritchard gives Claire girlish mannerisms, tripping little footsteps and a nervy smile. She can truly be envisaged as sleeping in her little cot in the attic. Olwen Rees’ Solange has a concentration of venom rendered all the more potent by her maturity of years. Her severity of appearance contrasts with the rawness of expression, the passion in “I’m shuddering with pleasure.” Her loathing seethes in lines like “She loves us like a bidet.” Rosamund Shelley’s Madame is a swirl of glamorous fur-wrapped display. She melodramatically declares herself ready to follow her lover to Devil’s Island, Siberia even. “Farewell” she sighs “to dances and parties and theatre.” The hierarchy of this stifling world is stripped bare, how she removes her servants’ film magazine with its Gary Cooper photo-shoots. “I’m something of a stranger in the kitchen” she declares. “The Maids” makes for an eerie, unsettling evening which makes it true to its author. Theatr Pena is a testament of will and aspiration to add something new to theatre in Wales. This is the first time the company has moved so far West from its supporting base in Newport; credit to the role of the Torch for facilitating it. In the spirit of the company’s frugality Riverfront director Nicolas Young doubles up as production photographer. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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