Lydia Wilson Archives - TheaterScene.net

Lydia Wilson

The Maids

June 7, 2026

Part of the play is an eye-filling fashion show with Solange and Claire trying on Madame’s gowns or taking them out of her closet to ogle them. However, what is most remarkable about Williams’ production is his use of technology as he did in his "Picture of Dorian Gray" with Sarah Snook on Broadway and his recent "Dracula" with Cynthia Erivo on the West End. The video technology used in "The Maids" is startling, almost overpowering at times. The mirror-lined closets and doors become giant screens that show us Madame’s online posts as well as her live footage of Solange, Claire and herself (from video designer Zakk Hein). Using Tiktok filters and effects she turns them grotesque or changes their face or features. Eventually in a dream sequence, Solange leads Claire through Madame’s closets and they visit a hallucinatory world of fantasy that we see on the screens. The fact that the screens are 13 feet high adds to the power and the effectiveness of these images. [more]

King Charles III

November 19, 2015

Admittedly, many of the ideas in the play are hardly new or revolutionary: the first measures to limit the scope of the British monarchy’s power date back to the 1215 Magna Carta and subsequent arguments challenging the divine right of kings include the American Declaration of Independence, drafted in 1776. Rather, this production’s merit lies in the shocking immediacy it brings to the subject. Acutely aware of the fact that the nearly 90 year-old Queen will not live forever, Bartlett takes us into a not-too-distant future where the inevitable change of the empire’s figurehead sends the nation into a state of upheaval. His England is just melodramatic enough that to allow us to see it as fictional yet a shade too realistic to feel truly dystopian. [more]