"MY SISTER IN THIS HOUSE" at Tinfish Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
It’s impossible to deny the allure of the savage murder of an upper middle-class woman and her daughter by two sibling maids in 1933 Le Mans, France – especially when peppered with incestuous lesbian overtones (the sisters were found together naked in bed after the murders). Currently the subject of a well-received French film, "The Murderous Maids," this story has confounded and intrigued people to the point of mad insatiateness. Scores of scholars and artists – most notably, Jean Genet, -- have devoured this Gallic crime of the century, often viewing it as a classic tragedy of class divisions.
Add to this vast output of maid mania playwright Wendy Kesselman, who penned her own version of the events leading up to these notorious bludgeoning and eye-gouging murders. But, in "My Sister in This House," she doesn’t stop at class warfare. Kesselman weaves and dissects the knee-jerk analysis of the case into a compact and creepy 90-minute play, which attempts to understand these girls’ damaged psyches, together with the forceful Madame and her compliant daughter’s debilitating emotional ennui. In fact, she even postulates that there may have been no reason at all for the killings and enlarges her study to one of oppressed women from all walks of life.
Director Alison Birkmeyer Aske’s staging for Tinfish Theatre emphasizes the imprisoned plights of both sets of women – further illustrated in Garrett West’s polarized, plank-like set design. Audiences must walk across the stage – or the crime scene, in a sense – to get to their seats, which surround the kitchen where the young maids, Christine and Lea, scour and rot away in mundane hopelessness. On opposite sides, one views the unheated, convent-like bedroom the sisters share and the tastefully appointed sitting room of the class-conscious Madame Danzard and her hen-pecked daughter Isabelle.
We are at once privy to these women’s dark, imploding secrets and cut off from the slicing configuration of the stage. One end of the social spectrum seems a terrifying tightrope walk over to the other. Yet Christine and Lea figuratively cling to each other in a fierce iron cage; Madame Danzard and Isabelle pace about and chatter in a gilded one. Each woman’s identity gets swallowed up in the dehumanizing doldrums of quaint domesticity.
Kesselman’s reimagined account provides us with snapshots of Christine and Lea’s sheltered lives – from the moment the bubbly teenage Lea joins her older brooding sister Christine (both by-products of neglect) in the stuffy Danzard household through the increased tension and silence of both parties, to the climactic murder. We also catch glimpses of Christine’s dangerous unhinging and domineering behavior.
The playwright expertly joins all the women in this horrific dance of despair so that no one gets easily labeled as the provocateur or victim. All the characters are worthy of our sympathies – a fact that makes this play so heartbreaking despite its more blood-curdling aspects.
Apart from awkward transitions and a few erratic lapses into mannered delivery, Aske’s ensemble quietly tears into the work’s vicious exploration of inescapable monotony. Crackles of electricity shoot across the polar opposites of the stage as we observe – tennis match-like –darting innuendoes, silent accusations and bursts of covetous pleasure.
Mary Jo Bolduc stops short of telegraphing Christine’s psychotic crumbling, but her soulful and uncontrollably manipulative demeanor lends a complexity to a woman whose pent-up rage emanates from an obsessive need for approval. Bolduc’s icy unpredictability (most evident as she dries crystal against sound designer Vance Smith’s eroding sonic backdrop of dripping water) melds intriguingly with Martti Nelson’s vivacious yet terrified Lea.
Kate Harris lends a human touch of unfulfilled dreams to the fussy, status-quo-preserving Madame Danzard, but she can still push the character into a more relaxed and genuine realm. Her neatly pressed and presentational style makes one too aware that she is acting.
One of the most multidimensional performances turns out to be Kourtney Vahle’s Isabelle – a role that could easily disappear into the fleur-de-lis wallpaper. Whether she’s embarking on one of her clandestine chocolate binges or staring drolly at herself in the mirror after her doting, delusional mother presents her with a gaudy hat, Vahle radiates disinterested exhaustion. She encapsulates the emotion-deadening repercussions of living in a damask-and-china-lined prison of unspoken insignificance.•
"My Sister in This House" runs through August 31 at Tinfish Theatre, 4247 N. Lincoln. Tickets: $12-$15. A special benefit performance for Rape Victims Advocates will be held August 10. Tickets: $30. Call 773-549-1888 or www.tinfish.org.
