Two maids, alone in their absent mistress's bedroom, take turns to play the woman they serve - and rehearse her murder. Written in 1947, Jean Genet's The Maids remains one of theatre's most frequently revived, and most thought-provoking, works. Co-produced by Adrian Buckle and Victor De Bono, a new production will open at Theatre Next Door this autumn, directed by Scott Le Crass and starring an all-male cast of De Bono, Malcolm Galea and Anton Saliba.

While De Bono juggles the different mindsets required as both producer and actor, for Buckle, the project belongs to his co-producer. "The Maids is, first and foremost, Victor's baby," he says. "He understands its rhythms, its provocations and, most importantly, why it still matters. That is the disturbing, seductive world Victor has invited me into - and I am immensely proud to be helping him bring it to the stage."

The Maids is "strikingly relevant", Buckle continues. "The play is contemporary in its obsession with identity as performance and speaks powerfully to our culture of fantasy and constructed realities. Genet anticipates many modern conversations surrounding gender, sexuality, social identity and self-invention, and understood what it meant to exist outside respectable society. The Maids continually destabilises conventional ideas of gender, desire and social roles."

De Bono agrees that the production is timely. "There is a growing movement in Malta to produce LGBTQ+ themed work with greater ambition, artistic rigour and complexity," he says. "Genet was writing about people who exist outside accepted structures of power and respectability, and the play is fascinated by identity - who we are, who we pretend to be, who society allows us to be, and what happens when those identities begin to collapse into one another."

The production is a Malta first for Martin Crimp's translation, premiered at London's Young Vic in 1999. "Crimp preserves that sense of danger and theatricality while giving the dialogue a very contemporary pulse," De Bono explains. "We are approaching The Maids very much as a psychological thriller. We wanted the audience to experience the danger of the situation rather than feel they were watching a museum piece. The language feels alive in the actors' mouths."

Scott Le Crass, whose Offie-winning revival of Martin Sherman's Rose starring Maureen Lipman earnt him a Best Director nomination, was a deliberate choice. "We felt The Maids needed a director who understood not only Genet's language, but also the queer politics that sit beneath it," says De Bono. "Scott could approach the play from within a queer theatrical sensibility without reducing it to a statement about sexuality or gender. We never wanted the casting to become a gimmick."

In the rehearsal room, De Bono shares the stage with two performers he greatly admires. "Malcolm is the more pragmatic and analytical actor - there is a precision to the way he works," he says. "Anton, on the other hand, has a tremendous fearlessness as a performer. He is extremely instinctive and responsive to what is happening around him. Since the play is built around three people locked into an increasingly dangerous psychological game, the chemistry between the actors is crucial."

The all-male casting fuels the production - and is in keeping with Genet's original instructions. "We are not trying to disguise the fact that these are male performers, nor are we attempting a naturalistic impersonation of women," De Bono affirms. "The theatricality is the point. We have actors playing characters who themselves are constantly playing other characters. The male casting adds one more mirror to that hall of mirrors."

De Bono, for his part, asks only that audiences arrive without preconceptions. "I hope audiences come with an open mind and resist the temptation to frame it simply as an LGBTQ+ play and leave the conversation there. Genet's play is far richer, stranger, darker and much more provocative than that, and its continuing place in the European theatrical canon is testament to just how much it still has to say."

Adrian Buckle and Victor De Bono's production of The Maids by Jean Genet performs at Theatre Next Door, Magħtab, on 2, 3, 9 and 10 October at 8pm and on 4, 11 October at 7pm. The production is supported by Arts Council Malta, Malta Gay Rights Movement (MGRM), LGBTQ+ Gozo, Aġenzija Żgħażagħ and the French Embassy in Malta. This production is suitable for audiences aged 16 and over. Tickets available at www.adrianbuckle.com.