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Beyond good housekeeping Jean Genet's murderous The Maids lives on, thanks to Cutting Ball By Robert Avilaa&eletters@sfbg.com "Lean over further and behold your reflection in my shoes." And what better mirror for a servant, you might ask, than the spit-buffed patent leather encasing Madame's foot? With all the heightened, ritualistic flavor of an S&M fantasy, the command — spoken by a maid pretending to be her own mistress, to another maid pretending to be the first — is already rich with the ceaseless role-playing, doubled images, shifting power lines, and volatile desire pervading the world of The Maids. Of course, Jean Genet's first work for the stage is nearly 60 years old, and doubtless does less these days to épater le bourgeois, at least the theatergoing kind. But if the loss of shock value means a more low-key embrace of Genet's theater of mirrors and criminal-saints, Cutting Ball Theater's crisp, elegantly staged production affirms its still-compelling style and darkly poetic force. And Adriana Baer's taut, intelligent direction makes the most of playwright Martin Crimp's bracing new translation. The boudoir of a wealthy woman (Sigrid Sutter) is the site for The Maids' intriguing deconstruction of appearances. Madame's two young maids, sisters Claire (Linnea Wilson) and Solange (Jennifer Stuckert), have just framed Madame's lover (an offstage male character) with forged letters and accusations of theft. As they rehearse the demise (in what is clearly a regular ritual) of their mistress, their revenge for and liberation from a degrading servitude, the play-acting oscillates between worshipful love and incandescent hatred for Madame, as well as love and hatred of each other ("We cannot even love each other. Shit does not love shit!"). When the sisters learn Monsieur has gone free on bail, they fear their plot will be uncovered, and decide to murder their mistress immediately. If Genet originally thought to have young boys in the roles of the maids so as to give fundamental attention to the theme of role-playing, or artifice, in the theater itself, then scenic designer Erik Flatmo's sumptuous, genteel bedroom manages a similar end by introducing its own mirroring effect: Opening on to two sides of the Exit's studio stage, it neatly splits the audience in half and sets each half across from the other. Watching the play thus means, peripherally at least, watching the audience watch the play. Claire Calderwood's exquisite costumes and Heather Basarab's splendid lighting, meanwhile, help lend fatally attractive elegance to the sisters' ultimate domain. This is a play with a lot of mirrors, whether the gilt-framed oval on the wall, the surface of Madame's shoes, or the eyes of the other (what Claire calls, looking into her sister-servant's eyes, the "mirror that beams back my image like a revolting stench;" or what Claire, playing Madame, calls all servants: "our distorting mirrors — our shame"). Reveling in a ceremony of worshipful hatred, mixing adoration and insults, Claire portrays an imperious and cruel mistress to Solange's servant. When we meet the real Madame, however, she treats them more often with gratingly sweet condescension and fickle interest, as if they were children one moment, pets the next — never more than beloved possessions (the sisters readily acknowledge between themselves that Madame loves them roughly on a par with her bidet). There's a sense that mistress and servant produce one another: The sisters act like children, first of all in that they play-act when she is away. But Madame clearly play-acts too, and is full of self-dramatizing devotion to her Monsieur. And in her presence we see Claire and Solange play-acting once again, this time the part of the loyal servants. When it comes to casting such subtly convoluted roles, you've got to figure good help is hard to find, but Baer has found it, drawing three focused, vivid, and supple performances from her cast. Wilson infuses Claire with a depth and steely intensity that belie her character's youth and delicate frame, while giving vent to the younger sibling's paranoiac sensitivity and ultimately more fanatical, ungovernable drive. Stuckert's Solange complements Claire with an equally layered portrait, shifting from moments of barely contained, almost ecstatic rage, to the eroticized calm of some inverted religious passion. Sigrid Sutter, meanwhile, aptly conveys Madame's condescension with the self-regarding graciousness, pettishness, and unquestioned centrality of a diva in repose. *
Through Feb. 25 See Stage listings for dates and times Exit Stage Left 156 Eddy, SF (415) 419-3584 www.cuttingball.com
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