Sunday, December 28, 2008

Writers' Theatre - The Maids


I just got back from seeing The Maids, the current production at Writers' Theatre. I am sorry to say I was not impressed with this one. At first I thought the actors were over-acting, but really it was the story.

Two maids, sisters, have a game of mocking the mistress and each other while she is away. The fantasy goes so far as acting out how they might kill her. It is difficult to see where the fantasy ends and where they are just plain crazy, which may be part of the point. But I wasn't all that interested in figuring it out. None of the three characters were sympathetic. I was just waiting around to see if someone actually died.

If this had been an adapted novel, I might pick it up to see where/if the adaptation went wrong. But it seems to have been an original, if translated, piece.

This is a good example of the down side to Writers' Theatre. The upside is that they do cool things that you would never see anywhere else. The downside is that sometimes there is a reason you wouldn't see them anywhere else.

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