My Sister in This House

Published Friday 18 January 2008 at 16:55 by Barbara Lewis.

The French town of Le Mans was scandalised in 1933 when two sisters, working as servants, murdered their employers with sickening violence.

For the audience of Wendy Kesselman’s absorbing play, the shock is almost as great.

Tension and edginess begin to build as the sisters fall in love, fall silent and their perfect housework becomes careless, but it is only a programme note that prepares us for the sudden savagery of the outcome.

However disconnected the ending, the acting, under Illona Linthwaite’s direction, is meticulous, the casting apt and we are engrossed by a study of fascinating female relationships.

All the actors are young, but Romilly Turner has gravitas as Madame Danzard, with her airs and provincial snobbery.

Her daughter Isabelle is played by a very gently rebellious Alexandra Burgess.

Their relationship is echoed by the sisters, with Tuyen Do as a beautifully baby-faced younger sister Lea, while Silvana Montoya as a thinner, older Christine sets impossibly high standards.

In hindsight, her jealousy and Lea’s panic-stricken outbursts are precursors, but even allowing that extreme restraint can mask extreme passion and murderers do not necessarily appear murderous, it is hard to accept they could kill only averagely insensitive employers with such brutality.