Controversial and challenging, The Maids is a dark theatrical fantasy which leads the audience on a winding physical and mental journey into an unseen world.

Jean Genet's infamous play has been translated and re-invented by internationally-renowned theatre-maker Neil Bartlett who is staging it in that most iconic of Brighton locations: an upstairs room of a seafront hotel.

The play is based on the true story of the French Papin sisters, housemaids who brutally murdered and mutilated their mistress and her daughter in 1933.

Often classed as France's "murder of the century" it remains the most violent non-war crime by women on women on record.

Madame Lancelin and her daughter Genevieve were found dead on the landing. Christine and Léa Papin had made no attempt to escape and were found lying side by side in their bed, a bloody hammer on the floor.

Genet's play is a fascinating exposé of the power dynamic that exists between unequals. The sisters take turns to act as Madame, abusing each other either as employer or servant.

The Maids is a classic example of Genet's notoriously overt celebration of criminality and the play has been adapted for theatre and film several times over.

Jane McMorrow, theatre programmer and head of the festival, says: "It's a site-specific performance above an old garage. It's quite a nasty tale and Neil Bartlett, the director wanted to stage it in an unconventional space to create a sense of uncertainty. It adds an extra element to the performance.

The audience gathers in the hotel foyer and the piece begins there before they are taken to the space upstairs. They are seated for the rest of the performance but they are very close to the action.

"It's all part of the experience."

Specially commissioned for the Brighton Festival, it marks a world premiere performance of this provocative tale.

Bartlett adds: "The Maids is a dark, delicious play about dreams of revenge. What better place to perform it than in a place where people traditionally go to act out their naughtiest fantasies: a room in a seafront hotel in Brighton."

Lit by award-winning designer Rick Fisher (Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, An Inspector Calls) and bringing together three of the UK's most extraordinary actresses - Hayley Carmichael (Told by an Idiot, Kneehigh), Geraldine Alexander from Lucy Bailey's Titus Andronicus, and Complicité's Olivier award-winning Kathryn Hunter - The Maids is a compelling late-night encounter which breathes new life into Genet's subversive hymn to the pleasures of betrayal, shame and rage.

Join the staff as they dress up and play games but watch in morbid fascination as amusement turns to murder.

Starts: 9.15pm. SOLD OUT Post-show talk, Thu, May 24, free to ticket holders Sponsored by Matthew Andrews, Photographer