Shown at Central Saint Martins Theatre, The Claire is billed as an adaptation drawing on Friedrich Drrenmatt’s The Visit and Jean Genet’s The Maids. Performed in Japanese with surtitles projected on a screen upstage, it traces themes of justice, guilt, and the corrupting pull of money as a community talks itself into moral compromise.

Drrenmatt’s The Visit is a tragicomic parable: the fabulously wealthy Claire Zachanassian returns to her ruined hometown of Gullen and offers the residents a billion dollars on the condition that they kill Alfred Ill, the former lover who betrayed her.

Genet’s The Maids centres on two sisters employed by a wealthy woman known only as Madame. In a ritualised game of impersonation playing each other and their mistress they give voice to rage, fantasy, and a desperate longing for escape.

Beyond a brief interlude in which Dong appears in Claire’s costume, it is hard to see how The Maids meaningfully enters the narrative.

The larger problem is staging. The Studio Theatre has no raked seating and, with the centre taken up by an assortment of office chairs (presumably standing in for the citizens of Gullen), much of the action is obscured for anyone not in the front rows. The surtitles, too, are not always in sync with the dialogue.

And yet, perhaps partly because of these flaws, the evening remains unexpectedly entertaining. Dong and Chen command the stage with an engaging ease, even when hidden, and Claire’s exuberant anime style costume is a delight.

One night only showing: Studio Theatre, Central Saint Martins 6pm, 27 April.

Three Stars

Reviewed by Nina Gardner.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-claire-tickets-1986057891617?aff=odcleoeventsincollection

Producer  Yi Gao

Writer & Director  Shuxin Si (Theresa)

Performer 1   Hui Chen

Performer 2  Ruoyi Dong (Dorry)

Set Designer   Lining Cao (Lynia)

Projection Designer  Shuxin Si (Theresa), LOTE Lan Wenyu

Sound Designer & Music Curator  Shuxin Si (Theresa)

Costume Stylist  Shuxin Si (Theresa)

Graphic Designer  LOTE Lan Wenyu.