'The Maids' review — Kip Williams's sharp update of Genet's classic drama is for the social-media age

Read our review of The Maids, in a new version by Kip Williams and starring Bridgerton's Yerin Ha, now in performances at the Donmar Warehouse to 29 November.

Summary

• Kip Williams adapts Jean Genet's The Maids following his hit version of The Picture of Dorian Gray in 2024
• Bridgerton star Yerin Ha is cast as the vicious Madame in a play about two maids who plan her downfall
• Lydia Wilson and Phia Saban star as the maids Claire and Solange

Kip Williams is the dynamic Australian director developing a reputation for one-woman shows, which reinvent classic texts. In 2024, he staged a daring, technically challenging Sarah Snook-led The Picture of Dorian Gray in the West End; next year, Cynthia Erivo will perform his take on Dracula.

In between these two, star-heavy productions, he has found time to direct a sharp update on Jean Genet’s absurdist drama The Maids at London’s intimate Donmar Warehouse — and while this may not be his trademark one-person show, it is unmistakably a Williams adaptation.

Genet’s 1947 drama about sisters and maids, Solange and Claire, who are driven to compulsive role-playing of the master-servant relationship by an oppressive and manipulative mistress might sound like an archaic choice for a modern staging. But Williams has brought the play straight into 2025 by making Madame (played by incoming season-four Bridgerton star Yerin Ha) a vain influencer-type, obsessed with her “daily stats” on follower growth (she’s currently sitting at an impressive 28 million), vaping, a rotating wardrobe of extravagant outfits, and, yes, even Labubus.

As with his Dorian Gray, Williams leans heavily on hilariously grotesque Snapchat filters and live streaming through Zakk Hein’s video design, cleverly implicating the superficial world of social media in the unravelling of maids Solange and Claire. They crave visibility, but are repeatedly denied any form of independent identity, with Madame carelessly mixing up their names and even telling Solange, “You’re lucky to be nobody in this world.”

The twisted tension between attraction and repulsion, desire and hatred is deliciously teased out by Lydia Wilson (Claire) and Phia Saban (Solange). Wilson, in particular, delights in role-playing the peacocking mistress, drawing her sister in for a kiss in one moment and viciously berating her the next. Their ritualised ‘ceremony’ is masochistic, drawing out the incestuous implications in Genet’s drama. Solange spends most of her time burning her knees as she crawls across the fluffy white carpets of set designer Rosanna Vize’s perfect boudoir.

But their dark game soon becomes indistinguishable from reality, and as the play nears the end of its brief 100-minute runtime, Solange and Claire edge to something near ecstasy, mirrored in the show’s technology as the Snapchat filters transform into disconcerting, trippy video projections.

Early on, it is clear that these women are striving to be seen, heard, or even noticed in Madame’s cosmetic prison, which is made literal by the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that surround the set and even reflect the audience’s image back to them. This means the relentless cycles of debasement and cruelty that follow are a lesson in endurance, and the show is likely to be divisive because of this. It also means that the plot struggles to move beyond its initial point, and while Ha’s entrance halfway through as the maniacal and petulant Madame is well executed, dramatically veering between vicious outbursts and girlish simpering ("I'm sowy, my little Spongebob Squareface"), it ends up feeling like more of the same.

Williams shows that Genet’s drama, revived a few times over the years (most notably by Jamie Lloyd in 2016, with Uzo Aduba, Zawe Ashton and Laura Carmichael), is ripe for a modern interpretation. But his version is still grasping to find something more than its surface-level spectacle.

Check back for The Maids tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Lydia Wilson and Phia Saban in The Maids. Inset: with Yerin Ha. (Photos by Marc Brenner)