Review Roundup: Kip Williams' THE MAIDS Transfers Off-Broadway

St. Ann’s Warehouse’s 2025-26 season is culminating with The Donmar Warehouse’s production of The Maids, Jean Genet’s production about class struggle and blurred identity, in a new version written and directed by Kip Williams. Performances will run at St. Ann’s Warehouse through June 14. Read the reviews here!

With their mistress away, two maids act out their darkest fantasies about Madame, their abusive “influencer” employer. They obsessively role play all day long, to the point of  “murdering” her, until performance and reality begin to blur. Williams’ contemporary take is a timely parable about modern identity and the destructive desire to both emulate and annihilate those we idolize. 

Williams’ production features Phia Saban (House of the Dragon) and Olivier Award nominee Lydia Wilson are the maids, Solange and Claire; and Bridgerton breakout star Yerin Ha is Madame, their mistress. 

In Williams’ version, featuring video design by Zakk Hein and scenic design by Rosanna Vize, the characters act out and broadcast their fantasies live on their phones. The livestreamed content, filtered to oblivion, looms over Madame’s  posh, soulless boudoir, amplifying the treacherous game of dressup unfolding within. 

Tim Jackson, The Arts Fuse: The Maids is an ideal vehicle for Williams’s “cinetheatre” approach. Politically, his theatrical strategy addresses our moment, which is defined by mediated realities, performed identities, and widening class divisions. Williams’s technological innovations also serve the play’s drama of self-immolation; its barrage of images, screens, reflections, and heightened language intensifies the play’s exploration of narcissism.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Without the threat of real violence, Williams’s The Maids gets stuck in its admittedly pretty surfaces. For a while, that’s more than enough to keep us engaged. Wilson and Saban maintain a laser focus through their ritualistic routines while adroitly recording their movements with iPhones (and adding filters in real time). By the end, Wilson’s Claire dons a designer gown and metallic wig while meeting her daily step-count goal on an offstage treadmill. I’m not sure what it has to do with Genet, but the commitment is admirable.

Kyle Turner, New York Theatre Guide: Even at its most heightened moments, The Maids never captures the electrifying danger that comes with witnessing either the consequences of the characters’ behavior or something revolutionary being done with the theatrical form. The production is so concerned with making itself contemporary, in transforming the text into a treatise on the artificiality of our current age, that it’s made no room for anyone’s soul.

Jackson McHenry, Vulture: Williams’s cine-theatre is an interesting device, but what’s more compelling as a viewer is the way in which human desire and action gets distorted or revealed through these technical whirls. Use a video camera all you want, but wield it with intention. Don’t make the screen an end unto itself.

Matthew Wexler, 1 Minute Critic: Which isn’t to say the performances aren’t captivating. But unlike Williams’ The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Sarah Snook transformed into 26 characters before our eyes with the help of an onstage film crew, The Maids gets stuck in a self-referential cycle that acts more as commentary than captivating theater.

David Cote, 4Columns: Visually, it reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” Dave Bowman’s POV as he hurtles down a trippy cosmic corridor. Yes, we all have a simpering, dutiful servant in our back pocket, and yes, like HAL 9000, it wants to destroy us. But does our death have to be so sexless, so brainless, so easy on the eyes?

Average Rating: 66.7%