From Genet's The Maids to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, theatre, film and novels are full of stories of maids who supplant mistresses, and nannies who worm their way into the affections of the husbands and children of working mothers. Few figures are more demonised than the nanny, a reflection of our confusions about our roles as mothers and the servant/employer relationship in the 21st century.
French writer Marie Ndiaye offers another, potentially more interesting spin on the urban myths about wicked nannies with designs on your life (style). Here it is the employer, the affluent but unhappy Mrs Lemarchand (Stella Gonet), who gradually detaches the unseen Hilda from her husband Franck and children. Bandying her leftwing credentials and claiming to act in the best interests of Hilda, Mrs Lemarchand uses flattery and blackmail to install Hilda in her life and to make sure that she never leaves. By the end, Hilda is no more. It is as if she has been consumed by Mrs Lemarchand, a kind of ultra-chic, emotional vampire or modern-day ogre who cannot bear to touch her own children and who lives in a beautiful glass house, a designer prison.
Rachel Kavanaugh's atmospheric production plays up the fairytale with tinkling music, but what this unthrilling thriller really requires is a touch more realism to stop you asking those niggling questions, such as why Franck doesn't just call the men in white coats and get the deranged Mrs Lemarchand put in a straitjacket, or storm the glass palace and carry off his sleeping princess.
Gonet works like a demon but the script's lack of character development works against her, and the hysteria is all in the audience as we realise that, like Godot, Hilda is never going to appear. Add to this a script that is often unintentionally hilarious and which can't disguise its radio origins, and you have an evening that is dramatically inert and often as reactionary about working-class lives as most Hollywood movies.
· Until May 6. Box office: 020-7722 9301.
