When, in February 1933, the two live-in maids Christine and Léa Papin brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, the French public saw the crime as an act of revolt by the downtrodden working class against their bourgeois oppressors. Fourteen years later, Jean Genet transformed the case into one of the earliest examples of what Martin Esslin would later call the Theatre of the Absurd —a form defined by rejecting convention, and by themes of absurdity and existential angst.

By presenting a world almost impossible to comprehend, absurdist drama forces the audience to confront its own comforting delusions and, ideally, shocks it into a more authentic confrontation with existence. It is little wonder that productions can leave spectators confused, agitated, or outright angry. And anger is what I felt leaving the Kip Williams production at the Donmar, though almost certainly not the anger Genet had in mind.

Initially, I became irritated that the first twenty minutes or so played out behind gauze. I understand the concept and the symbolism; I also get the metaphor of the curtain being lifted. But I go to the theatre to see actors act, and I pay for very good seats to have a very good view, not one obstructed by sheers.

Once the veil was finally lifted, the actors came into view but felt somewhat incidental. The stage was dominated by enormous screens and mirrors showing grotesquely distorted live footage of the performers. Again, I understand the idea, and the device is scarcely original (Benedict Andrews employed it, to some acclaim, with Blanchett and Huppert in 2014). But here, the extreme to which it was taken meant that I could not tear my eyes away from the warped reality TV show of highly distorted, barely human avatars. I was frustrated that the acting remained obstructed.  

But even though it did not feel very much like theatre, I did in fact enjoy the performance. I must also admit that the heavy filters were an innovative way to honour Genet’s stage directions that demand the maids’ make-up be excessive, artificial, and slightly grotesque—not beautiful or natural. Why therefore did I leave the Donmar dissatisfied?

It took me a while to unpick, but Williams’ interpretation ultimately depicts the world as it is, not its distorted, heightened version. Presenting Madame as a vacuous, talentless “nepo-baby influencer” with twenty-four million followers is not absurdist exaggeration but a documentary. The heavy filters are now a daily tool for countless trans personalities such as Dylan Mulvaney, who deploy “womanface” in order to sustain an identity intended to deceive both themselves and those around them: the spectacle of identity-as-performance taken to pathological extremes.

If the absurd has become the unremarkable feed of our daily scroll, is it even possible for a performance to stay true to the premise of the Theatre of the Absurd? In this case, it seemed not, and the climax was hardly a shock horror. Rather, it was the inevitable endpoint of obsession with curated selves played out to its logical conclusion. And that is an extremely unsettling, disturbing revelation and probably the true cause of my anger. So, now that I have written all of this out and taken the time to properly reflect, it is possible that Williams did, in fact, achieve the intended impact.