Madame is good. Madame is rich. Madame is beautiful. Madame is generous. Is it for these reasons that Solange and Claire, her two maids, decide to kill her? Tragedy, drama, and comedy entwine around these three characters in search of their identity. Jean Genet warns us not to take this tragedy literally. For him, it's a tale, an allegorical narrative: Sacred or not, these maids are monsters. They have aged, they have become thin under Madame's softness. They spit their rage. Austere in their black dresses and flat black shoes, the maids' world is the kitchen with its sink or the attic room, furnished with two iron beds and a pitch-pine chest of drawers with a small altar to the Holy Virgin and a blessed boxwood branch. Genet succeeded with this play, The Maids, perhaps because he lived out his own humiliation inside his characters while writing it. The Maids premiered in 1947. It is now Jean Genet's most performed play worldwide. And this play does not age. On the contrary. Through a subtle role play, the piece thematizes a social violence that continues to wreak havoc in our lands. And all this is expressed in a poetic language of unparalleled beauty.
Good to know
Director: Frank Hoffmann
Set and costumes: Susann Bieling
Cast: Valérie Bodson, François Camus, Jeanne Werner
Production: Théâtre National du Luxembourg
Automatically translated from French.
Where does it take place?
Théâtre National du Luxembourg Asbl
194 Rte de Longwy
1940 Belair Luxembourg
Otherwise… check out the agenda
see all the things
to do around you
Take Supermiro
everywhere with you.
Hey, don’t go away...
Get the best
outings around you
All the best deals
events
spots