Classy Dames in Desperate Straits
Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert
in ‘The Maids’ at City Center
By BEN BRANTLEY
AUG. 9, 2014
Some real classy dames are tearing up the joint at City Center, where the
Sydney Theater Company is performing its rip-roaring production of Jean Genet’s
“The Maids” as part of the Lincoln Center Festival through Aug. 16.
You might add that these ladies, embodied in the august personages of Cate
Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert, are stinking up the place, as well.
Their language, with its sewer-mouth talk of body odors and functions,
is as rank as it is florid. Then there’s that fancy perfume they keep spritzing
on their private parts. And, oh, those cut flowers — what looks like acres of
them — which are flung about at random and used as vigorous instruments of
flagellation.
A less-charitable theatergoer might detect another aroma within this
bouquet of smells: the whiff of acting so ripe it’s gone rotten. But to object
to that would be to miss the point of what the comfort-zone-trashing director, Benedict
Andrews, and his brave cast of three — which is rounded out by the
smashing young actress Elizabeth Debicki — are trying to achieve here.
That would be a portrait of people who are acting from desperation,
trying on poses (and clothes and makeup) in a furious, futile bid to achieve
some sense of identity. Becoming someone else to become yourself, and flailing
and failing, is a sad and sorry existential process in “The Maids,” which was
inspired by a true story of homicidal sisters working as domestics.
The first play written by Genet, the professional outlaw and great poète maudit
of the 20th century, this 1947 drama is about acting as being, and being as
nothingness. Small wonder that the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
embraced it so heartily.
Whether New York audience members will clasp this unlovable show (newly
translated with contemporary references and vulgarity by Mr. Andrews and Andrew
Upton) to its bosom is another matter, especially if they’ve mortgaged their
apartment to buy scalpers’ tickets. It is, to put it bluntly, a mess, in ways
both intentional and unintentional.
Featuring a multimedia, dimension-scrambling set by Alice Babidge that
suggests the world’s ritziest walk-in closet, the show throws in everything but
the kitchen sink. No, scratch that; there is a kitchen sink. It is loud, lurid
and often impossible to follow, even if you know the play beforehand.
And I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
That’s largely because of Ms. Blanchett, who won the Oscar this year for
Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” and has been seen to dazzling effect in New York
with the Sydney Theater Company productions of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and
“Uncle Vanya.” Once again, she proves herself to be the ruling mutation master
among contemporary actresses.
Ms. Blanchett portrays Claire, the younger and (marginally) meeker of
the two title characters, who with her sister, Solange (Ms. Huppert), regularly
acts out the fantasy ritual of murdering their rich and gorgeous employer,
known only as Mistress, played by Ms. Debicki. (On this night, Claire gets to
be Mistress, while Solange portrays Claire.) In doing so, Ms. Blanchett would
seem to deploy every theatrical tool that she has at her command, though I
suspect she still holds a few in reserve to surprise us the next time we see
her.
Within minutes — no, seconds — she switches from the tones and postures of
self-effacing servility to raging aristocratic arrogance, from little-girl
passivity to assaultive sexuality. She truly contains multitudes. The wonder is
that we believe every one of these self-contradicting displays, even though we
know that Claire and the actress playing her are just, uh, acting. And she
forces us to the uneasy conclusion that acting may be all there is in life.
That may also be implicit in the performance of Ms. Huppert, one of the
French screen’s most fearless and incisive stars. But it’s hard to make that
assessment, given that her thick accent renders her unintelligible for much of
the time. Her scrappy, fierce Solange is a whirling dervish of acrobatic
energy, for sure.
She matches Ms. Blanchett’s Claire in her intense, whiplash physicality
but not in tonal variety. Ms. Huppert also tends to mime her lines with fervent
comic exaggeration, suggesting a visitor from the Planet French Music Hall. Is
there any way that Solange and Claire could really be sisters? And is it
possible that their Mistress, no matter how socially myopic she is, could ever
confuse one with the other?
I’m assuming there’s method in the casting here. Genet wanted “The
Maids” to be performed by men, to emphasize the gap between a person’s
self-perception and the gaze of those who look upon him. Ms. Huppert’s blatant
dissimilarity to Ms. Blanchett discounts any possibility of our accepting “The
Maids” on easy naturalistic terms.
So, too, does the production’s use of simultaneous video projections (by Sean
Bacon), captured by camera operators who are visible behind the set’s
transparent side walls. Sometimes the camera creates still lives out of the
flowers, dresses and objets de luxe that are thrown about.
On other occasions, it lingers on the faces of the actresses, and you
realize that the women on the screen are not the same as the characters you’ve
been watching through the haze of stage lights. (Nick Schlieper did the
intricate lighting.) Well, at least not in the cases of Ms. Blanchett and Ms.
Huppert, who appear much older and wearier in merciless close-up.
Ms. Debicki, who is in her early 20s, looks pretty much the same, which
is ravishingly unlined. And you see the ingenuity in Mr. Andrews’s casting the
Mistress as a spoiled debutante type rather than the usual middle-aged society
matron. Excess, after all, is an accessory that looks attractive only on the
young.
This Mistress can still get away with changing her attitudes and
emotions the way she changes clothes. Once she makes her entrance more than
halfway through the play, you see how precisely Claire has been imitating her.
Such exact mimicry makes both women seem pathetic, but especially Claire,
because she’s now too old for that part.
That Ms. Debicki sometimes resembles the Cate Blanchett of 20 years ago
makes the parallels all the more disturbing. And the double act they perform
toward the end of the production’s uninterrupted 115 minutes makes you
uncomfortable in ways I imagine might have pleased Genet, who was notoriously
hard to please.
By the way, in the very first pages of the Playbill for “The Maids,”
you’ll find a double-page ad for a Giorgio Armani fragrance, featuring
an exquisitely serene model. That’s Ms. Blanchett. It seems highly appropriate
that onstage the same woman is tearing that image to shreds. This perfume
goddess is stinking to high heaven. I mean that as a major compliment.
By Jean Genet; new translation by Benedict Andrews and Andrew Upton,
based on an initial translation by Julie Rose; directed by Mr. Andrews;
designed by Alice Babidge; lighting by Nick Schlieper; music by Oren Ambarchi;
video by Sean Bacon; sound by Luke Smiles; dramaturge, Matthew Whittet;
assistant to the designer, Sophie Fletcher; voice and text coach, Charmian
Gradwell; a Sydney Theater Company production, Mr. Upton, artistic director;
Patrick McIntyre, executive director; presented by the Lincoln Center Festival,
Boo Froebel, producer. At City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan;
212-581-1212, lincolncenterfestival.org. Through Saturday. Running time: 1 hour
30 minutes.
The Maids
WITH: Cate Blanchett
(Claire), Isabelle Huppert (Solange) and Elizabeth Debicki (Mistress).
