Hilda

Synopsis

Mrs Lemarchand, a well-to-do woman and a study in megalomania, draws her innocent cleaner, Hilda, into a trap from which there is no escape. Hilda's life, and her marriage to the hapless Franck, is destroyed by Mrs Lemarchand's spiralling obsessions. Marie Ndiaye is a 33 year-old novelist whose work explores cruelty in everyday life by pushing it to the extremes. She shook France's literary circles with her latest novel 'Rosie Carpe' which won the prestigious 'Prix Femina'. Hilda is her first play.

Our Review:

12 April 2006

It’s a sad sign of the current state of French theatre that Hilda, a radio play by the Franco-Senegalese novelist Marie NDiaye, should have won a major critics’ prize three years ago while another play of hers was the first piece by a contemporary author to be admitted to the Comedie-Francaise. This play went from radio to the Paris stage in a triumphal progression that might have convinced Anthony Clark, Hampstead’s artistic director, that he had another Art on his hands.

If he ever did, Sarah Woods’ pedestrian translation does not prove as persuasive a text as did Christopher Hampton’s of Yazmina Reza’s hit play. There are vague similarities. As in Art, the dramatic situation is one of triangular tensions between people who define themselves by the way others see them.

A rich lady, who brandishes her socialism like a chiffon scarf, hires the unseen Hilda as a nanny for her children and gradually, we understand, devours and po...

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Latest User Review

195.82.123.181) - 25 April 2006:

After the savage reviews I wasn't expecting much from this. In fact, I really enjoyed it. The atmosphere of almost Pinter-esque suspense and uncertainty is nicely racked up in Rachel Kavanaugh's adroit, attractive production (Peter McKintosh's revolving glasshouse set is beautiful), and there are moments of savage humour and occasional pognancy. As the self-aggrandising Mrs Lamarchand, obsessed with the unseen title character, Stella Gonet is absolutely superb: funny, unhinged and oddly haunting. Bo Poraj does a nice line in incomprehension and then defeat as Hilda's husband. Not entirely clear on what the play is trying to say and at barely 70 minutes it hardly constitutes a whole night out, but I was very pleasantly surprised....

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