Now in its world premiere in Red Bank, the new play from
Tony Meneses grapples with big issues with wit and empathy.
By Alex Biese
“How do you show a human being?”
That question, asked by a costume designer in the midst of a creative, moral and existential crisis in the play “A Thousand Maids,” is a query the new work now on stage at the Two River Theater in Red Bank also asks itself, and it’s a quandary it forces the audience to reckon with as well.
From playwright Tony Meneses and director Aneesha Kudtarkar, “A Thousand Maids” has its world premiere run through April 28 in the intimate confines of the Marion Huber Theater, part of the Two River Theater’s 30th anniversary season.
The premise, on its face, seems simple enough. Costume designer Cordelia (vibrantly played by Natalie Woolams-Torres) is holed up as a guest in a posh Park Avenue apartment, tasked with the seemingly straightforward assignment of designing a maid’s costume for a new Broadway play. The proceedings, however, are complicated by Cordelia’s desire to avoid cultural stereotypes, as well as the comings and goings of a trio of maids, each with their own elusive and complicated truths.
Deonna Bouye, Kate Rigg and Maria Elena Ramirez bring wit and depth to their work as the maids who give the show its title. There aren’t a thousand of them, but that’s not to say the show isn’t grand in its own clever way. This production is far twistier and more crowded with ideas than its single-set, four-player, 90-minute presentation would suggest.
T. Charles Erickson
Meneses and Kudtarkar take a brisk comedy with metaphysical flare – in presentation, it is aesthetically not terribly far removed from a classic three-camera sitcom – and use it as a platform for balancing some heavy concepts: matters of class, representation, equity, dignity, personal perspective, legacy and more are all in the mix as the play frequently feels like it’s grappling with these ideas in dialogue with itself, Meneses’ concepts and characters sparring for the emotional and intellectual high ground.
Yet one of the show’s most profound statements isn’t conveyed with words but rather in its design. The apartment that houses the proceedings feels like nothing if not a Manhattanite interpolation of the limbo waiting room of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” or the palatial galactic accommodations in the climax of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The work of scenic designer Alexander Dodge, it is a stately, well-appointed and cold space that our characters inhabit – some would say find themselves trapped in – and yet none of them truly live there or can be said to have any ownership of or agency over the space. In that way, the apartment is an insightful depiction of the play’s worldview as Meneses and Kudtarkar present, with profound empathy, a series of women of color who are trapped in service to a world not of their own making nor of their choosing.
“A Thousand Maids” seems genuinely interested in taking those individuals who find themselves behind the scenes in life’s supportive occupations and placing them and their lives in the spotlight; that’s true of both a costume designer hired to dress the cast of a play and the maids employed to tidy up after others. This is the story of a handful of very particular characters, but in its interrogation of how employment can define so much of one’s interactions with the world around them, “A Thousand Maids” is aiming for something universal.
“A Thousand Maids” plays through April 28 at the Marion Huber Theater at the Two River Theater, 21 Bridge Ave., Red Bank. For tickets and a list of special events scheduled to be held in conjunction with the show’s run, visit tworivertheater.org.
The article originally appeared in the April 18 – 24, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
