Three women enter dressed in black and, at a shared glance, dive onto a neatly made bed whose plump pillow is graced with a single rose.

One grabs the flower first and stands up triumphant. She throws a hand mirror onto the bed between the remaining two. The woman who seizes the mirror begins to undress to her slip, the one who loses reels away reluctantly to put on an apron and a pair of black washing up gloves.

Perhaps this selection process is a charade - perhaps Hayley Carmicheal, Geraldine Alexander and Kathryn Hunter have already decided who will play Madame and who the two maids, Claire and Solange. If so it's an even cleverer beginning to Neil Bartlett's site-specific production of Jean Genet's The Maids, a play about ritual, dressing up and acting out in which the combination of role and performer will not be repeated on any two consecutive nights.

Causing a scandal when it was first performed in Paris in 1947, The Maids is based on the true history of the Papin Sisters, two apparently demure servants in Thirties France who plotted the brutal murder of their mistress and her daughter.

They were later found huddled naked in bed, which seemed to suggest a homosexual and incestuous relationship. Here we see two sisters role-play their employer's murder with increasing intensity, the younger sister Claire (tonight Alexander) playing Madame with comically elongated vowels and safety pins in the train of her gown.

The necklaces and velvet the sisters handle so reverently conceal a game more often associated with chains and leather. And Jonathan Swain's breathtaking design, lit by mangled, floor-level chandeliers and showered in rose petals, suggests at once a lady's boudoir and a lair, a catwalk and a violently hallucinatory space.

While the characters seethe and shift beneath them in an engrossing and heartrending post-mortem of identity and obsession, the actors hold on by their teeth, giving three knockout performances and bringing the narrative lucidly to fever pitch.

To wilfully recast so perfect a show must be the ultimate act of directorial bravery.

  • Until May 26. Call 01273 709709