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Summer Camp

Domestic dramatics dazzle in 'The Maids'

Monday, February 19, 2007
BY PETER FILICHIA
Star-Ledger Staff
NEW JERSEY STAGE

In the first five minutes, the audience hears "Take your gobs of spit with you" and "Behold your reflection in my shoe." Soon to follow are "Take up the slack, you slut," and "I hate your breasts."

Jean Genet's sado-masochistic trailblazer, "The Maids," has arrived, courtesy (if that's the word) of the Garage Theatre Group in Teaneck. Director Michael Bias has put his audience not in their regular seats, but in folding chairs on stage, just inches away from the cast. This makes them feel more like voyeurs, as they watch this sordid story of two maids and their mistress. 

Though Bias only has 60 seats, cynics will say he won't need that many. A play that includes face-slapping, hair-pulling, incest and rubber gloves isn't audience-friendly. 

Actually, there's a good chance Bias will need more seats when word gets out that this is as good a production of "The Maids" as anyone could ever hope to see. 

It starts with Claire imperiously ordering Solange to do task after task. Solange obeys, though she sometimes adds a sharp comment. Then an alarm clock goes off. Both women become flustered. They scurry about, for Madame will soon be home. 

Both Claire and Solange are actually maids. They spice up their subservient, humdrum life by playing a game where one pretends to be Madame, while the other remains a servant. It's how they work out their hatred for the lady. 

They've exorcised it in another way, for they've sent the police a letter that implicates Madame's husband in a crime. When they find through a telephone call that their plot isn't going as smoothly as expected, they crumple with fear. Solange rallies and spurs Claire to go ahead with the second part of the plan -- to kill Madame. 

The play's meaning isn't that it's so hard to get good help nowadays. It's about the nature of those in power and those who yearn to achieve it. Can the meek inherit Madame's bedroom? Genet doesn't think so.

Bias has made one mistake. Both maids aren't supposed to notice that the phone's been left off the hook, but Bias has placed it in such a spot that each maid has ample opportunity to notice. 

He's also pulled one punch. Genet originally envisioned three men in the roles. Perhaps Bias felt his audiences could only take so much, but a better guess is that after he found three amazing actresses, he just had to use them. 

Michaela Kafka gives Solange eyes that seem both sleep-deprived and disappointed. She makes each speech of frustration into an aria of sexually repressed hysteria. What a sure-footed descent into madness she delivers, too. 

As Claire, Sarah Koestner is so convincing as the round-shouldered wimp that she belies the fact that she was the performer who had just overwhelmed the stage in her Madame impersonation. 

Ruth Darcy is a supercilious Madame, who thinks she's being so grand when she offers the maids the dresses of which she's grown tired. When Solange make a tiny mistake though, out comes the fire from the dragon's mouth. 

Though each of the three has many opportunities to come across as a dominatrix, it's Bias who's apparently cracked the whip. No question that he understands this kind of theater. Now, will his audiences? This must be the first production of "The Maids" preceded by a 50-50 raffle.