Las criadas

Sisters Claire and Solange Lemercier are maids in the employ of a lady member of the French high bourgeoisie. Every night they begin a perverse ceremony, a ritual in which reality and fiction merge in a deadly game of switched identities. Claire is the lady and Solange is Claire. Solange is the lady and Claire is Solange.

They are alienated beings, lacking identity. There is no good sister and no bad sister, the two change roles constantly, because neither one of them exists on her own, because they are the two faces of the same character. The bitterness and anger they suffer due to their awareness of their destiny as maids leads them to a fatal outcome.

“Her ladyship thought she was protected by her barricade of jewels, her ladyship thought she was safe in the shelter of her destiny as a grieving lover, in the trenches of her sacrifice, because her ladyship thought she was special, her ladyship thought she was different, and maybe she was, maybe she was different and special, but her ladyship failed to take something into account. Her ladyship never expected the maids' revolution! The revolution that comes from below and climbs all the way up to you to put paid to your adventure! Her ladyship’s affair with that common thief!”

A production of Pentación Espectáculos and Teatro Español