Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert are in Sydney for a while. The Sydney Theatre Company is co-starring the two beauties in Jean Genet's The Maids. It is a racy production full of sexual themes and intrigue, loosely following the Papin sisters story of murder, secrecy, and fantasy.

Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert are on sabbatical from their high-profile film careers, co-starring in the Sydney Theatre Company's new adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids. But even here, the camera lens is never far away.

In director Benedict Andrews's production, the stage will be bugged with surveillance cameras. Every move his cast makes can be captured and projected on to a screen onstage. Nothing will go unnoticed.

''You're watching two women in an extreme crisis, in an untenable relationship,'' Andrews explains. ''As servants, they are the lowest of the low and so they have invented a sexual fantasy world, a game leading them towards murder.''

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