Theatre
My Sister in This House (Hampstead)
Blood sisters
Christopher Edwards
Wendy Kesselman's play is based upon the same notorious French murder case of 1933 that inspired Jean Genet's The Maids. Two young hard-working sisters, Christine and Lea, are taken into domestic service by an oppressive petite bourgeoise called Madame Danzard. The action spans the period between the start of their employment, in 1927, and their sudden, ferocious massacre of Madame Danzard and her daughter Isabelle. The killings themselves are related to us, from a blacked-out stage, as readings from the court transcript of the girls' trial — a dramatically effective climax. The court record deals with these gruesome details in classically sober, matter-of-fact terms, which are far more shocking than any enactment on stage could hope to be. Why did they do it?
The reasons are not that easy to state, but this is not to suggest any failure on the part of the playwright or in Nancy Meck- ler's direction. The production gives a vividly realised sense of two claustropho- bic, parallel female worlds. Both are highly ritualised, each fascinated with the other, but they never touch. Indeed, communica- tion of any sort is minimal; no words of instruction are delivered by Madame Dan- zard to the sisters. Meals are brought in and served in silence. Once the sisters have left the room, Madame and her graceless daughter fall upon the veal, and wonder at the girls' efficiency, skill and utter apart- ness. Madame's domestic authority is im- posed through a number of ritual inspec- tions, again conducted in complete silence. She checks for dust by slipping on a white glove, rubbing it in obscure crannies, and flourishing it before her daughter's nose like a conjurer; everything is spotless, at least until the very end. This particular rite is charged with sexuality, most obviously in the way Madame handles the carved balus- trades. It also fires the repressed instincts of her daughter when she, in private, allows Lea to slip the glove on to her hand and brush her hair. This latter scene is one of the rare instances where the two worlds do touch. Indeed, you are made to feel that the tension is so great that they must touch but that when they do some tremendous ignition will take place. And of course this is just what happens.
But it is actually part of the haunting quality of this piece of drama that a gap always remains between the emotions of the two murderesses and their fearful retribution — if that is quite the word to use. Nothing about the numbing routine of their existence, nor their intense, overtly incestuous intimacy, can quite explain the attack. The two girls are eventually dis- turbed in bed by the return of Madame Danzard and her daughter, who expect the door to be opened when they ring, and their meal to be ready. Madame threatens to come upstairs to their tiny room, a private place which fascinates her but which she has never entered. Christine, her hair down for the first time in the evening, confronts her on the stairs. With her hair up she has always seemed most severe, tightly controlling her feelings. With it down she seems both girlish and maenadic. Throughout the entire six-year period of their association, these two women have hardly uttered a word to one another. Madame Danzard's route to the bedroom is barred by Christine in what comes over as an almost ecstatic act of courage. And then the two girls fall upon their employers like animals devouring their prey.
The success of the production depends upon its delicate and precise ensemble acting. The smallest gestures are eloquent — the daughter (Tilly Vosburgh) dropping a sweet-wrapper back into the bowl is a bold act of filial defiance; in a photo- grapher's studio the change in Lea's (Mag- gie O'Neill's) eyes from fear to flirtatious smiling suggests a whole other life that she might have lived in the world outside. Suzanne Hamilton is the grave and very moving elder sister Christine, while Mag- gie Steed plays Madame Danzard — a performance that discovers comic eccen- tricity in the least likely material.
This is a delicate production, whose slight dramatic opportunities are woven together by a subtle creation of mood. It absolutely requires the claustral closeness of a tiny auditorium like the Hampstead, which is the place to see it before (as I would imagine) it transfers to the West End.
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