Theater review: My Sister in This House

by Christopher Soden of John Garcia's The Column

DALLAS — Despite the grisly results, the murders committed by Christine and Lea Papin captured the imagination, psyche and political sensibilities of great philosophers, psychoanalysts, artists, the population of France (and the rest of the world) when they were originally discovered in 1933.

Sisters who survived as live-in housekeepers (cook and chambermaid) in Le Mans, France, the two were found naked in bed together, embracing, after murdering their mistress, Madame Lancelin and her adult daughter.

The bodies bore not only the evidence of the fatal blows, but extensive mutilation, including eyes gouged with fingers, deep slicing wounds and obvious steps to denigrate them. Theories came from every corner as to the reasoning behind such savage mayhem and the nature of the sisters' attachment.

The victims, of course, could not speak for themselves, and the perpetrators, whether by reason of catatonia, intuitive wisdom, or possibly both, provided little illumination. Seventy-six years later, it is surprising to find the lengthy list of treatments devoted to the Papin case, or perhaps, not so surprising at all. Films, both documentary and narrative, plays (including Jean Genet's The Maids) books, articles, an opera, all seek through speculation and conjecture to explain this heinous crime.

Experts sometimes cited a dehumanizing caste system and blurred distinctions between criminality and social anarchy. Even for servants living in a blatantly tiered society, the Papins were treated abominably. It's certainly conceivable that any pair so severely diminished and marginalized may have felt they had nothing to lose by ignoring boundaries (however appropriate) conferred by a culture that had little use for them as individuals.

Which brings us to WingSpan Theatre Company's current production of My Sister in This House, written by Wendy Kesselman (1982). My Sister in This House is an intelligent, sometimes lurid, sometimes tender, and profoundly disturbing drama inspired by the notorious homicides, which takes the lesbian aspect of the sisters' relationship as fact. When their attorney explained to them that confessing to such behavior would probably exonerate the two (by reason of insanity), one denied it outright, while the other said nothing. Which is to say the question has never been answered with utter certainty and probably never will.

There is much to suggest (from their personal family history) the plausible underpinnings of an incestuous relationship between Christine and Lea Papin, to a large degree reflected in the play's milieu. That said, the story of these two lost souls: degraded, betrayed, molested, abandoned, exploited, is all about the transgression that often occurs in response to systematic abuse. Lesbianism and incest can both be construed as forms of transgression.

They can also be interpreted as survival techniques employed by the severely damaged and isolated. Neither of which necessarily means the Papins had a se*ual relationship. It's very possible Kesselman had artistic reasons for choosing to depict the sisters in this light, apart from her personal beliefs about the nature of their bond.

My Sister in This House transpires in the pressure cooker dwelling of Madame and Isabelle Danzard. There are no male performers and when the two maids go to pose for a picture, the photographer's voice comes from offstage. After a long separation, Christine and Lea have reunited in the household occupied by the crusty insipid matriarch, and her grown daughter. Both of the sisters' wages go to their mother and they work a 16-hour day, cooking for and meticulously cleaning up after the two women, in addition to sewing, ironing, dusting, and making sure a candy wrapper is removed before 10 seconds have passed.

It doesn't take long to infer the sinister dynamics at work in the Danzard home.

At first, the mother and daughter seem innocuous enough, but soon we come to understand the ugliness of a matron who gloats at the abundance of labor she gets for shelling out a pittance, manipulates servants who desperately crave approval, and uses them as whipping boys when she can't act out against her daughter. Initially, it seems preposterous when she and Isabelle see Lea in a nice sweater and nearly have a stroke. When the other shoe drops, and we realize this is viewed as some flagrant act of insubordination (attire disproportionate to her station) the effect is alarming and incendiary. All this tumult from wearing an oversized sweater in a drafty old house.

Kesselman uses a doubling technique common to drama with cunning expertise. Anytime you see two pairs in a story, the author is very likely inviting a comparison and such is the case here, with the mother/daughter pair exhibited in contrast to the intense and devoted sisters. There is plenty of friction between Madame and Isabelle to be sure, but it is subjugated under the guise of pretense and appeasement.

Lea and Christine inhabit a shadow realm of those whose lives have been trivialized and demeaned. Yet for all that, they stand in high relief to the vapid Danzards. They are genuine in their desire to please and be loved.

Clare Floyd DeVries has created a breathtaking, unnerving set, with dismal, blunted colors, and the capacity to exhibit action in several places at once. It is cramped as if viewed through a fisheye lens, staircase descending as if on a path to madness. Entering the theater, we're immediately struck by its consuming presence, evoking interiors from films such as The Innocents, The Haunting, or Ingmar Berman's Persona.

Barbara Cox's costume design is mischievous and inventive, making dresses for Madame and her daughter identical enough to suggest thematic twinning, but different enough to create tension. It isn't just about the matching black maid's uniforms, it's the mannish undergarments and eerily suggestive stockings and wedding trousseau so exquisite it's nearly angelic. It's about a dainty, pristine apron that can double as a wimple and nightgowns that seem oppressive and rustic.

Director Marjorie Hayes has handled this volatile, impossibly charged content with amazing skill and confidence. Armed with a cast of four powerful, precise actors she has managed this material, suffused with calamity and sensuality, coquettishness and barbarism, daydreams and nightmares, making it comprehensible without resorting to facility or rushing to judgment. The slow burn, the bizarre eroticism, the childhood fantasy, the grotesque megalomania -- it all weaves into an otherworldly fabric. Like a negligee or shroud.

Catherine DuBord as Christine is forceful, contained, vigilant, nearly submerging the terror and longing that informs her compulsive attention to detail. Christine is the most complex of the characters in My Sister, and DuBord gives her grace, authority, and rage. When she pleads with Madame for mercy, promising she won't cry again, you just melt. I cannot begin to describe the tremendous emotional demands of such a role, but only express my admiration for Ms. DuBord's talent, dedication, and vulnerability.

Whitney Wilson is pitch perfect as Lea, the effusive, tremulous younger sister, fraught with self-doubts and self-loathing. Thin and waiflike and looking sometimes like the gaunt, quintessential orphan, Ms. Wilson has so much electricity and raw feeling, you can understand why older sister Christine feels so protective. There's ferocity beneath the agitation and fear Wilson expresses; we feel it lurking, ready to pounce.

Madame Danzard is played by Susan Sargeant, and she's got an excellence mix of maternal neuroses mixed with girlish vivacity. Madame is a dodgy combination, steely one moment and affable the next. Her behavior towards Isabelle suggests the airy affection missing from Lea and Christine's mother, while still implying the jabs and gibes that happen in any family. Sargeant accommodates this sleek duplicity beautifully, with versatility and resolve.

Stephanie Stuart as Isabelle Danzard plays the bitchy, platinum blonde ingénue, who must endure her mother's dominance, but in turn, is all too happy to torment Lea, dangling a sweet with wanton delectation. As with Madame, there's a duality to the part of Isabelle. We gather she has little going on beyond attachment to her mother, that she, too, feels lonely and excluded. But then, she also rejects the opportunity for kindness when she has venom to spew.

There's a nearly fleeting hysteria in My Sister that evinces slowly at the outset, gradually building (without intermission) to the volcano that boils over when Christine finally snaps. Christine believes she's unlovable because she's flawed and only if she remains perfect can she ever hope to be loved. When she discovers that Madame's approval is specious and arbitrary at best (perhaps like her own mother?) her disillusionment quickly turns to overflowing anger.

It's difficult to do justice to that instant, its overwhelming havoc and destruction, without buckling to ghoulish fascination. My Sister handles it with balance and discretion. This may be a story about retribution and unbridled fury, but it's also about subsisting in the throes of unremitting pain.