The Maids

At what looks to be at least a good 6'5", he towers over the other actors in Pauline Goldsmith's Glasgay-commissioned production of Jean Genet's The Maids, his face made up butoh-white, physicality somewhere between jungle predator and malevolent alien lizard.

However, William Brennan as Solange's younger sister and co-conspirator Claire, though turning in an equally fine performance, always seems to be rooted on Earth.

We believe the human world-weariness of the one maid, and in the otherworldliness of the other, but the majority of the play turns on their shared fantasy life, in which their identity is dissolving into each other, and at some of these points Genet's text, a difficult one at the best of times, doesn't quite connect with the audience.

However, Goldsmith's otherwise very well-crafted production does hit a convincingly eerie tone as well as all the blackest notes of Genet's comedy. There are at least three laugh-out-loud moments, but despite all three characters being played in drag, none of them ever tip over into camp caricature, and both Goldsmith and her actors have a fine ear for the squalid beauty of the play's language.

Unflinching in its portrayal of sado-masochistic fantasy, and well acted all round, Genet himself would have approved these Maids, twisted little puppy that he was.