Genet's 'The Maids' shows how hard it is to find good help

A scene from "The Maids" by Jean Genet at Buddies in Bad Times TheatreSupplied

The curtains open at the start of The Maids on a nearly nude Ron Kennell, his belly spilling slightly over his underpants, but his body in the pose of a refined lady, one arm lifted up in the air grandly.

It's to the short-statured Stratford Shakespeare Festival's veteran's face that the eye is drawn, however, in this opening tableau. It's difficult to imagine a mug more appropriate for Jean Genet than Kennell's – flattened but feminine with a rough beauty that naturally suggests some sort of gynandrous gangster.

In the petty thief-turned-poet's 1947 play, two domestic servants secretly spend their evenings playing a perverse form of dress-up in their mistress's bedroom.

During the day, Claire – played by Kennell – and Solange – played by fellow ex-Stratfordian Diane D'Aquila – are the perfect servants, but at night, they ceremonially enact their own degradation at the hand of their mistress Madame and then rehearse her murder.

(They also enact their degradation at the feet of Madame – in that opening scene, D'Aquila's grizzled Solange is soon on her knees alternatingly spitting on and licking Claire/Madame's shoes.)

The Maids was inspired by a true story of domestic violence from France in the 1930s – two sisters who murdered their mistress and her daughter – but in the play, Claire and Solange's sadomasochistic games are more symbolic, meant to reveal that class identity is largely if not entirely a performance. Here's an actor playing a maid playing a mistress – what's the difference between any of them, beyond the relative grandness of their gestures?

In director Brendan Healy's often striking but intermittently soggy new production of the play for Buddies in Bad Times, Genet's exploration of class is extended without strain to gender as well.

Women originated the roles of Claire and Solange, but Genet's champion Jean-Paul Sartre later claimed that the playwright had actually wanted men to play the characters. Depending on what source you read, Genet either confirmed or denied this. As with much of his life and art, the precise truth is unclear.

Regardless, Healy splits the difference between the two approaches, with Kennell as the more feminine Claire and D'Aquila as the assertive Solange.

The roles have also been aged up to mixed effect. Genet suggested Solange was in her early 30s and Claire a bit younger; using older actors becomes problematic when it comes to their fantasies regarding the delivery boy and other forms of deliverance. Here, dreams of escape never seem like anything more than dreams.

Madame does make an appearance as herself – and as played by Maria Ricossa, it's a good one. Entering Julie Fox's reddish-pink set in a green pantsuit, she doesn't have to try very hard to make an initial impression. She goes on to paint an insecure, self-absorbed, but still somehow sympathetic portrait of the flighty mistress. If anything, Claire's impersonation of Madame's grand gestures at the start doesn't do justice to her own impression of herself, arms splayed out dramatically against the walls.

On the whole, the scenes where Madame is on stage – either as channelled by Claire or in the flesh – are quite riveting in their roleplay, ritualistic or otherwise. The extended sequence wherein Claire tries to get Madame to drink a poisoned cup of camomile tea almost has the suspense of a thriller.

But when the domestics are simply playing themselves and revealing their secrets, Healy's production becomes too subdued, and Kennell and D'Aquila are muffled. Acoustically, the carpeted stage is not helpful. I had to listen carefully to hear even from the second row over Richard Feren's melodramatic soundscape. The production's energy dips and spikes.

The Maids runs until Oct. 9.

The Maids