Donmar Warehouse, London
There are superb performances in this screen-saturated staging of Jean Genet’s play, updated for the influencer age
Screens were essential to Kip Williams’ one-woman adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Sarah Snook played 26 parts. That hurricane of a play from Sydney stormed the West End with its innovative and immaculately timed technology. Screens feature just as extravagantly in this three-hander that sweeps you into its turbulence at relentless speed.
Written and directed by Williams, this new version is a brash, eye-popping take on Jean Genet’s 1947 drama about two maids (and sisters) who engage in dangerous master-servant games and role play. Where some of the original subtleties around power and eroticism are lost, the technology audaciously employed here – live smartphone footage projected on to the back panels of the set – captures the fevered fantasy that drives the engine of the play as the sisters slip in and out of make-believe rebellion against their mistress, referred to as “Madame”.
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