Theatre
Theatre review: Miss Julie
A modern-day version of Strindberg's Miss Julie set in Hampstead is a miss for our critic
June 15, 2018 13:38
By, John Nathan
2 min read
A modern-day version of Strindberg's Miss Julie set in Hampstead is a miss for our critic
June 15, 2018 13:38ByJohn Nathan, John Nathan
Strindberg’s Miss Julie has undergone many a makeover of the last few years. Patrick Marber’s version moved the play from 19th century Sweden to early 20th century England, Yael Farber located the classic in post-apartheid South Africa and now the ferociously talented playwright Polly Stenham plonks the story about love— or sex — across the class divide into 21st century Hampstead.
Rather than a fusty Swedish mansion, the setting is one of those modernist, minimalist mansions that occasionally interrupt the brick and stone splendour of the area.
The first ten minutes of Carrie Cracknell’s production is a pumping house party. It’s Julie’s birthday and our first impression of Vanessa Kirby’s modern day version of the role is pure wild child.
Away from the writhing bodies, and on the other side of a vast retracting wall (design by Tom Scutt) is the chill room. Actually it’s the kitchen, the most remarkable aspect of which – other than its sleek blemish-free surfaces — is the number of dishwashers. I counted four.
So this is either an extremely kosher household, or the number of white goods here (all concealed, natch) speaks of not only the extreme wealth into which Julie has been born but also the size of the house in which she lives.
Here she inhales cocaine, swigs alcohol and also begins to flirt with her absent dad’s Ghanaian chauffeur, Jean (Eric Kofi Abrefa). But it is not so much the class distinctions that make Julie’s behaviour so “inappropriate” and dangerous, as the fact that the flirtation with Jean happens in the presence of her loyal, Brazilian maid Kristina (Thalissa Teixeira).
As Julie, Kirby is absolutely terrific. She simultaneously exudes an upper class sangfroid and also the internalised turmoil of critically low self-esteem. She is the embodiment of privileged and neglect, themes explored in Stenham’s breakthrough play That Face. So you can see why she might have leapt at the chance to explore them again.
But transporting the play to a “liberal” household — in tolerant London — in the permissive 21st century, pulls the rug from under Strindberg’s play. When, after discovering Jean’s betrayal, Kristina confronts her employer with an eloquent, powerful speech about how she and Julie are “hostage” to their social situation, well it just doesn’t ring as true for characters whose trials, torments and dilemmas result more from choices they have made than the circumstances into which they were born.
And the attempt to contrast white privilege against the absence of wealth and status as experienced by Julie’s darker skinned staff feels like a very half-hearted attempt to inject racial politics into the play. It’s as though the talented creators of this show had never seen Farber’s version, in which race is the deadly, violent and searing context into which Strindberg’s period drama was unceremoniously — and brilliantly — dropped.
Still, Kirby — best known for playing Princess Margaret in The Crown — is superb. There is also terrific work from Teixeira as the wronged maid.
However, for my money, Abrefa’s Jean lacks the charisma that sexual chemistry needs if it is be the two things that Strindberg presented in his original: irresistible and deadly.
