Review Roundup: THE MAIDS at American Players Theatre

THE MAIDS by Jean Genet plays at the Touchstone Theatre until October 5. The show features Melisa Pereyra and Andrea San Miguel as The Maids, and Rebecca Hurd as Madame.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Mike Muckian, Wisconsin Gazette: The Maids is one of the shortest plays in APT's 2017 season. It also may be one of the most intense, with director Gigi Buffington almost literally wringing the life out of her performers... As the maids, actors Pereyra and San Miguel deliver highly effective and exhausting performances, following a script that mixes familial politics with what the maids believe their mistress is thinking about them. Dressed in their dowdy black uniforms, they tease, they taunt and they threaten each other in a litany of abuse. Buffington sees to it that the pace never lets up, and neither do the actors... Scenic designer Yu Shibagaki has created an ultra-chic set framed with cold marble floors and walls that suggest stainless steel. Costume designer Devon Painter's dresses for Madame are as colorful and frivolous as the maids' uniforms are dark and depressing. Even Victoria Deiorio's sound design, primarily a white-noise hum, supports the suggestion that the maids live the oppressive life of prisoners.

Mike Fischer, Journal Sentinel: Director Gigi Buffington's searing and riveting American Players Theatre production of his play - in which the actors playing the titular characters are, like Buffington, Latinx - honors the Genet who championed the dispossessed, while showing us a mirror reflecting the way we live now... This production of "The Maids" isn't just disturbing because it so accurately describes divisions of race, class and gender in a country where the bounty promised by the American dream is both tantalizingly close and forever receding for most of its immigrants. It's also harrowing because it offers no exit. Even relentlessly rehearsed playacting can't transform these women's lives; as the maids impatiently tell each other, the script through which they've imagined both becoming and then destroying Madame has grown tired.

Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times: Pereyra and San Miguel approach their work with extraordinary control and focus, building on the maids' shared frustration and sense of betrayal. Pereyra, a new core company member, reveals a glittering edge as she pretends to be Madame. Claire clips her words and tosses her hair - she has studied her mistress like an actress preparing for a choice role. Still in her maid's apron, San Miguel simmers as Solange, alternating righteous anger with the weariness of responsibility.

Alexis Bugajski, Picture This Post: The audience is barely given a moment to breathe almost the entirety of the play. As the show opens, the maids are already acting out their violent and dominating scene as Madame and Maid, which continues with a timer ticking in the background. The two leads, Melisa Pereyra and Andrea San Miguel, are ferocious and complex as they keep up their heightened emotional state - from angry, to worried, to upset, and back to vengeful once again. Every "Madame" feels biting and sarcastic.

Paul Kosidowski, Milwaukee Magazine: But director Gigi Buffington's brilliant reimagining of The Maids brings it resolutely into the world of 21st-century America. Without making significant changes to Bernard Frechtman's commonly used translation, Buffington has transformed it into a harrowing dissection of the dynamics of race and class, and she's done so without sacrificing any of the plays otherworldly visceral power... Andrea San Miguel and Melisa Pereyra as the maids, Rebecca Hurd as the mistress-deliver fierce, fearless performances. It's a brave, essential production.

Photo: americanplayers.org

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