102
SUSAN SONTAG
new play
The Screens.
What makes Bruzzichelli's version of
The Maids
so good is that he has concentrated as much on the use of the actors'
bodies as on the text. The fact that
The Maids
is a one-acter, without
intermission, helps to sustain the seriousness of the production. The
action is designed to proceed without arbitrary interruptions. There is a
continuous sexual energy on the three-quarter stage, which comes from
a studied and unhurried movement, from a stylization and heightening
of gesture. The best moments of the play are when the text is allowed
to subside into silence. Bruzzichelli's staging begins boldly, in a long mute
sequence when the two sisters, Solange and Claire, enter their mistress'
room and begin to play the game of impersonating her; it ends with a
tableau of Solange standing, hands crossed as if manacled, and Claire
sitting with the cup of poisoned tea at her lips- thus omitting the final
speech of Solange delivered
while
Claire is drinking the tea. Bruzzichelli's
interpretations and cuts are certainly open to question. The play is
changed radically by making the maids young girls, and their mistress
an affected, nervous, middle-aged woman ; according to Genet's text,
the mistress is twenty-five, and the maids are in their thirties. Never–
theless it is a valid, if not the only interpretation- strongly and intel–
ligently acted by Kathleen Widdoes as Claire, Lee Grant as Solange,
and Eunice Anderson as Madame. Kathleen Widdoes is particulary
extraordinary, with her lithe, childish, sexy body and face which
beautifully set off Lee Grant's dark, furious inwardness.
Susan Sontag
NOTE: IRVING HOWE'S orticle, "The Costs of History," in our Foil
1963 issue, is the Introduction to The Basic Writings of Trotsky, Rondom
House.
