The Maids: Jean Genet Through a Digital Looking Glass

When I arrived in DUMBO to see The Maids at St. Ann’s Warehouse, I got lost. The entrance wasn’t where I expected it to be, so I circled the building looking for the right door. Along the way, I passed tourists taking photos beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and people at nearby restaurants photographing their food before taking a bite. Everywhere I turned, someone was performing for a camera. It seemed like an appropriate way to begin a play about the allure of performance.

Written in 1947 and loosely inspired by the Papin sisters’ murder case, Jean Genet’s The Maids follows two sisters, Claire and Solange, who work for a wealthy Madame. When Madame is away, the sisters slip into her dresses, don her wigs, and act out elaborate fantasies that end in her murder—though they never quite succeed. Kip Williams’s modern adaptation explores Genet’s ideas of identity, power, and performance for the digital world, layering the story with influencer culture, social media, and Snapchat filters.

Upon entering the theater, I could only partially see Rosanna Vize’s set design through a gauze curtain, like peeking into someone’s apartment through an illuminated window at night. Beyond the curtain was a cream carpet, a vanity, tall mirrored wardrobes, and an abundance of hydrangeas. The play is built on role-play, in which one sister becomes Madame and the other becomes the maid. Williams doesn’t alter this structure so much as give it contemporary tools: the mirrored wardrobes, transformed by Zakk Hein’s video design, double as fractured screens, allowing the digital versions of the characters to loom over their physical selves on stage in real time. The curtains finally part once the ruse is over: Madame is on her way back home, and the sisters must clean up the mess they’ve made.

The performances are a true highlight of the production. Lydia Wilson and Phia Saban give Claire and Solange a frenetic, co-dependent energy. One moment they are collaborators, the next rivals, then sisters again. The actors capture the exhaustion of two women caught between worship and resentment, always on the edge of combustion. Their relationship feels parasitic as one feeds into the other’s fantasies and both grapple with their devotion and contempt for Madame. At times, I couldn’t tell if they wanted to kill her, be her, fuck her, or all three.

Yerin Ha is magnetic as Madame—an influencer with millions of followers—whose cruelty is matched only by her hilariously unwavering belief in her own goodness. Ha moves erratically across the stage, cycling through different outfits, trying on new identities, from wounded public figure to selfish nepo baby to benevolent employer. The maids, too, in pale pink, almost childlike uniforms, become a visual contrast to the glamorous outfits Madame thrusts upon them (and then quickly takes back), and serve as a class system all its own. Marg Horwell’s costume design suggests that a new self is always hanging in the closet, waiting to be selected.

Watching The Maids in 2026, it’s difficult not to think about how performance has become integrated into our daily lives, as we all maintain some version of the public self. I’m certainly guilty of curating a vibe on social media, photographing my dinner, and writing (and rewriting) a meaningless Instagram caption. By the time the play ended and the actors took to the stage for the curtain call, I resisted lifting my phone to aim it at them, feeling both guilty and called out by the play itself as a voyeur: of the characters, the actors, the performance. Instead, I let my phone sit quietly on my lap as I applauded—taking only one final photo of the destruction left behind.

Suggestion: Before the show, grab a drink at Roof Top Bar at Time Out Market and make a dinner reservation at Cecconi’s DUMBO. I had a vodka martini with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge and ate whipped ricotta & truffle honey crostini, kale pesto fusilli, and branzino.

And then I arranged it all, just so, and took pictures of it.