The Maids, The Pit, Barbican, London

Here is a strange mixture. The Maids, brought to the Barbican Pit jointly by Bite:02 and Dance Umbrella, starts from Jean Genet's French play of 1947 but such words as are still included are given in four different languages. The action still concerns two maids (both played by men) who are fatally obsessed with dressing up as their mistress. They are now, for part of the time, prisoners in adjacent cells. And the play has been adapted into dance theatre by the dancer-choreographers Ismael Ivo – who comes from Brazil via New York and Germany – and Koffi Koko, born in Benin but now based in Paris. Then add Yoshi Oida as director, with his interest in ritual influenced as much by European theatre (Grotowski, Brook) as by Japanese traditions. Oh, and it's produced by arts organisations in Stuttgart and Berlin in conjunction with theatres in Rouen and Ferrara.

To complicate matters further, someone has decided to introduce an unneeded device from another Genet source, whereby one of the "maids" (who appeared, up until that point, rather unambiguously to be men) blows cigarette smoke to the other through a straw pushed through a crack in the imaginary walls of their cells. That doesn't help or make much sense in this context. In spite of all this complexity, the actual presentation is simple: two low, flat beds, and adaptable costumes that are mainly white or red (design by Kazuko Watanabe).

That the production holds together in spite of those discrepant sources is to the credit chiefly of the performers. Koffi Koko and Ismael Ivo inhabit their characters with equal conviction and intensity, expressed in a mixture of dance and acting. What kind of dance? Well, actually pretty ordinary; it's "how" rather than "what" that makes the difference. They are abetted by Ziya Azazi, another man, as both a dour jailer and a ferociously acrobatic Madame, and by João de Bruco providing some speech and playing his own score on a variety of percussive instruments and appliances.

Even when Herbert Ross made a straightforward treatment of the same play as a ballet (impressively but briefly given by the Royal Ballet 30 years ago), it would have been hard to follow without knowing the plot. This more drastic adaptation exacerbates that factor. Yet it does convey the feelings of envy, desire and perversity that lie at the heart of Genet's work. A strange but gripping performance.