Stage: Rehearsal for Murder

Map It:  Mt Vernon Square 

ONE DAY IN 1933, two French sisters who had been working as maids in an affluent household for seven years abruptly murdered their employer and her daughter, gouging their eyes out while they were alive and then using a hammer, knife and pewter jug to finish the job.

While the two sisters working as maids in Jean Genet's "The Maids," inspired by those events, don't necessarily want to be that vicious, they've certainly determined life would be better off without Madame around anymore.

While the idea of two conspiring maids unsuccessfully trying to destroy their boss seems like fodder for slapstick comedy, "The Maids" — presented by Scena Theatre — functions more as abstract, absurdist commentary on social inequality. Solange (Nanna Ingvarsson) and Claire (Jenifer Deal) don't just dislike their work; they engage in elaborate sadomasochistic role-playing to act out the murder of Madame and, when not absorbed in those, get into involved conversation about their inferior social status.

One can't help but wonder whether the problem would be solved if the two could just get out some, but, as it were, they've got silver to shine.

It all seems a tad overblown until Madame herself shows up. Part Cruella De Vil, part Jadis the White Witch, Madame is manipulative, mocking, haughty, snide and generally not someone you'd want to be virtually enslaved to.

As Madame, Danielle Davy absolutely steals the show as a delightful bitch the audience loves to hate; it's a wonderful performance that livens up the show right as it begins to stall, giving a jump-start that carries the plot through to its conclusion.

Mainly, it's much easier to see why domestic workers — or, really, any reasonable person at all — might want to see her drop dead.

As one of the main pieces to arise from Parisian avant-garde theater in the '40s, "The Maids" is much less straightforward than the simple plot implies. Violent, twisted and obsessed with the concept of power and control, the play stays as unpredictable as the fantasies its two central characters lose themselves in.

» Warehouse Theater, 1017 7th St.; through Dec. 16, 8 p.m., $20-$30; 202-783-3933. (Convention Center)

Photo courtesy Ian C. Armstrong/Scena Theatre