The reverence paid to Jean Genet’s overwrought 1947 play, in which two sisters in service role-play the murder of their awful mistress, always baffled me. In Australian auteur Kip Williams’s version, adapted and updated to a world of Instagram followers and filters, and running a high-octane 100 minutes, I finally got it.
This is a hectic, shouty psychodrama which barrages the audience with emotion and imagery. The maids perform for their phones, the footage augmented and blown up on a rear-stage bank of floor-to-ceiling mirrored wardrobes.
