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Theaterhaus Stuttgart - Ishmael Ivo and Koffi KokoOctober 2002 London, Barbican by Bruce Marriott |
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I'm not sure how many in the country are particularly 'up' on Jean Genet let alone his particular 1940's play, 'The Maids', but should the play be an old favourite you need to be aware that in this production much is changed... not just the simple addition of music and some song and dance you understand, but more crucial things like the maids being men and it being set in a jail. It all seems rather strange - intoning not exactly well known French literature and then turning it all inside out in Germany with a creative team from Brazil, Benin, Turkey and Japan. 'Not perhaps my cup of tea' I thought as we waited for the house lights to go down and I mused on what dance disaster might beset us on stage in the tiny and claustrophobic Barbican Pit theatre. Go mad in here and it can't be hushed up! Well The Maids is a mad piece but also inspired and riveting - a compelling advertisement for the cross-arts, cross-everything approach that sponsored it. The Maids is about two maids - sisters - and the twisted relationship between themselves and their employer. The jail setting and the mistress/warder is as much about the mind's obsessive tricks as anything but the sense of domination, humiliation and twisted love and erotism is real enough and the murder of the employer/jailer is very real. Such tenderness and such pain on very open display. The story unfolds in a series of cameo scenes but what fascinated me is the acting and unusual and wonderfully physical presence of Ismael Ivo and Koffi Koko - the maids. They are men, powerful men with muscles, and yet also simpering preoccupied women fascinated by style and elegance as they dress and make themselves up. There is little dance but the beauty in their movement suffuses everything. You are grabbed at the start when they share, in their separate cells, a cigarette by one blowing smoke through to the other using a straw carefully inserted through a small hole in an imaginary wall. Such spiritual reverence - the beauty and stillness of it all draws you into their very odd world, from which there is no escape. Ruining the peace and weird companionship is the jailor - dominant as either warder (epaulets and uniform) or mistress (in beautiful evening gown). But the character and performance jars a little - you really want to understand more about the maids. The score is played live by Joao de Bruco and for the most part is percussive and as intellectually odd as the maids. It winds us up with its plucked tension, creaks and rattles but is spoiled when it breaks into German heavy rock - not for long but very time-warp. And the singing was just unneeded too. Dance , The Maids, is not but when it comes down to it this is Ivo and Koko's show and I suspect they could pickle walnuts and we in the audience would be enthralled. But this is played with intelligence here and I would not belittle it.
It was my considerable misfortune to see a production called 'DeaDDogsDon'tDance DjamesDjoyceDead' in the Queen Elizabeth Hall by NeedCompany and some Frankfurt Ballett dancer. About James Joyce, the play sought to give new insights but merely came over as pathetic twaddle and many were so bored by the occasion that they walked out mid-performance. Well the Maids is the flip side of such an approach and my goodness it's refreshing when it work.
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