What: St. Ann's Warehouse hosts the Donmar Warehouse's revival of Jean Genet's classic, as adapted by Kip Williams. Two sisters work as maids for a high-maintenance narcissist, but spend their time when she is away playacting as her while they rehearse ways to kill her.
And? I'm glad I finally got to see this play, and Kip Williams certainly knows how to deliver a kinetic and engaging interpretation of it. It's probably a play I'll never actually like, but it's one I can appreciate. Williams's liberal use of iPhone filming with different filters flavors well the contemporary nature of wealth and celebrity enjoyed by Solange and Claire's Madame. Rosanna Vize's scenic design is striking: a room of soft white carpeting, bed, sunken nook sofa, and ceiling-high mirrors, the space is both minimalist and bloated with decadence. Video Designer Zakk Hein enables the mirrored walls to serve double-duty, as a giant screen on which to project the camera feeds of iPhones and iPad: the funhouse mirror writ large over the more literal mirrors. Reflection on reflection on filtered reflection, performative histrionics from both the sisters impersonating their Madame and from Madame herself, an ecstasy of materialism and perception, of envy and love and loathing. All three actors do excellent work, but of particular note for me is Yerin Ha's work as Madame: one moment all tragedy and vulnerability, the next love bombing her two employees, the next her eagle eye catching any perceived liberty taken by them and zeroing in with the coldness of a criminal prosecutor.
 |
| Lydia Wilson as Claire (playacting as Madame) and Phia Saban as Solange. Photo by Julieta Cervantes. |
No comments:
Post a Comment