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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

The Maids review – Jean Genet’s chilling game of master and servant

Sisterly resentments … Charlie Oscar and Anna Popplewell in The Maids at Jermyn Street theatre, London.
Sisterly resentments … Charlie Oscar and Anna Popplewell in The Maids at Jermyn Street theatre, London. Photograph: Steve Gregson

A haughty mistress taunts the maid who is helping her dress – deriding her looks, her smell, her lowly life. “Get out. Take your gobs of spit with you,” she says, with dark glee.

So begins Jean Genet’s absurdist drama about two role-playing sisters who act out the master-servant relationship like an elaborate game of Dom/sub make-believe pushed to the extreme.

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