We first see breathy, earthy Claire dressed in her mistress’s finery, bossing solemn, aggrieved Solange around and heaping opprobrium on her work, her clothes, and her rank breath. Crimp’s adaptation is laced with enervating disgust, references to spit, sweat and body parts, and virulent class hatred. Genet may have been a contemporary of Samuel Beckett, but The Maids feels tonally closer to August Strindberg’s plays from a half-century earlier.
