The Stables Theatre and Arts Centre
The Bourne, Hastings
East Sussex TN34 3BD
01424 423221
The Bourne, Hastings
East Sussex TN34 3BD
01424 423221
The Maids
By Jean Genet
Bourne to Run Theatre
Directed by Duncan Brown
25–26 July 2008
Reviewed by Philip Blurton
By Jean Genet
Bourne to Run Theatre
Directed by Duncan Brown
25–26 July 2008
Reviewed by Philip Blurton
This year’s Stables programme has seen some courageous decisions, with excellent results, to bring more challenging work to the theatre. Following a successful run of modern plays by Moira Buffini and Stephen Poliakoff, we were now in the territory of the Theatre of the Absurd with a production of Genet’s 1947 play, The Maids.
Under the name of Bourne to Run Theatre, Stables members performed the story of two housemaids who construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals around their mistress while she is away. In the 1940s the idea that servants could be plotting against their “betters” would have been a more shocking concept than today, particularly as the servants’ murderous schemes involved graphic homosexual fantasies. But this was the nature of Genet’s work, with its highly unusual, innovative dramatic form, aiming always to startle and shake its audience from comfortable and conventional lives. This new way for the theatre had emerged from the experiences of two world wars which had demonstrated the impermanence of values, shaken the validity of conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness.
Genet’s powerful provocative drama can easily fall flat and be embarrassing to watch when the performers are not up to the task. However, the cast of Zola Thomas, Jackie Eichler and Lita Brooker rose to the challenge superbly, holding our attention with their pacey energy and confident physicality that refused to shy away from the play’s testing and disturbing requirements.
Outside the theatre I had the feeling I had seen a great play, performed to a high standard within an evocative period set … but just what was it all about? Such a feeling is testament to the director, Duncan Brown’s, success at staging an absurdist piece of theatre, which by definition will raise as many questions around meaning as it provides answers. A discussion of the play took us into the realms of power, class distinction, hypocrisy, revolution and freedom. For the maids, dreams of freedom from the power and hypocrisy of their mistress were in the end only achievable through the power they had over their own lives, and death, and all else was fantasy. And was this entertainment or art, and is there a difference, and can one achieve a kind of freedom through one’s own death? So many questions and ideas to ponder, and all from one night at the theatre. More please.
Under the name of Bourne to Run Theatre, Stables members performed the story of two housemaids who construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals around their mistress while she is away. In the 1940s the idea that servants could be plotting against their “betters” would have been a more shocking concept than today, particularly as the servants’ murderous schemes involved graphic homosexual fantasies. But this was the nature of Genet’s work, with its highly unusual, innovative dramatic form, aiming always to startle and shake its audience from comfortable and conventional lives. This new way for the theatre had emerged from the experiences of two world wars which had demonstrated the impermanence of values, shaken the validity of conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness.
Genet’s powerful provocative drama can easily fall flat and be embarrassing to watch when the performers are not up to the task. However, the cast of Zola Thomas, Jackie Eichler and Lita Brooker rose to the challenge superbly, holding our attention with their pacey energy and confident physicality that refused to shy away from the play’s testing and disturbing requirements.
Outside the theatre I had the feeling I had seen a great play, performed to a high standard within an evocative period set … but just what was it all about? Such a feeling is testament to the director, Duncan Brown’s, success at staging an absurdist piece of theatre, which by definition will raise as many questions around meaning as it provides answers. A discussion of the play took us into the realms of power, class distinction, hypocrisy, revolution and freedom. For the maids, dreams of freedom from the power and hypocrisy of their mistress were in the end only achievable through the power they had over their own lives, and death, and all else was fantasy. And was this entertainment or art, and is there a difference, and can one achieve a kind of freedom through one’s own death? So many questions and ideas to ponder, and all from one night at the theatre. More please.
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Photographs > www.artypharty.com
A selection of production photographs from the 1950s to the present is available at our photographer Peter Mould’s website.
A selection of production photographs from the 1950s to the present is available at our photographer Peter Mould’s website.
