Review: Miss Julie (Park Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

First staged in the 1880’s, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie is heralded by many as a masterpiece, and countless others an influence. Following up their successful run of Leaves of Glass, Lidless Theatre’s Miss Julie marks their return to the Park Theatre, and bolsters their reputation as another strong production. Using the Michael Meyer translation, first staged by the National Theatre Company in the 1960’s, this Miss Julie is as provocative as it's ever been, and firmly grounded in its original setting.

Set in a grand home overseen by the unnamed and unseen Count, the play opens on Midsummer’s Eve, celebrated with dancing, merriment, and drunken shenanigans from the estate’s servants. Kitchen worker Christine prepares a modest dinner for her fiancé, valet John, who bursts in with gossip about the lady of the house. Miss Julie, who soon joins them, is utterly mad, he says – she has opted to join the festivities and all but commanded John to be her dance partner. Soon exhausted Christine is asleep, and Julie’s tests of her command over John becomes more intimate, and far more dangerous.

Though absent for a sizeable portion of the play, Adeline Waby’s performance ensures Christine’s importance never comes into question. Increasingly revealed as the only sensible one of the unlikely trio, she brings a grounded quality to the character, whose humour is more direct and whose solutions are far more practical. Deeply wounded by both her lover and her mistress, Waby’s Christine carries a quiet dignity, and a sense of self that protects her against the need for control that so heavily weighs on the other characters.

Director Max Harrison moves his characters around the white tiles of the kitchen as if playing a complicated game of chess with the kings blocked from view. Julie and John re-position themselves while vying for the upper hand, seeming to be looking for their next move even when revealing their innermost selves. Kit Hinchcliffe’s uncomplicated set proves the perfect battleground for these eternal contestants, the kitchen inhabited only by a table and chairs, the dishes and instruments needed for Christine’s work, and a small cabinet containing glassware and beer. The pair change seats, exchange drinks and articulate with cooking knives as their cat and mouse (or cat and cat, at times) games continue. Hinchcliffe also provides wonderfully detailed costumes, clarifying social class even without dialogue and adding to Miss Julie’s beauty.

Of course, Katie Eldred has far more than her looks to offer the production. A magnetic presence onstage, she can in a moment become utterly beguiling or entirely intolerable, a cruel and sadistic mistress or a delicate young woman who wishes inherited status weren't a factor in who she may or may not dance twice in a row with. When Julie begins to rapidly fall into despair, completely abandoning the whimsical flirtations of the earlier scenes, Eldred digs deep and finds real sorrow and pain, shifting from imperial grandeur to quiet solitude before our eyes.

Well-matched as her would-be suitor John, Freddie Wise makes years of servitude and pent-up emotion entirely believable. Whether trying to reject Julie’s advances while maintaining his deference, or scolding her like a naughty schoolgirl under his care, his revulsion at their differing circumstances and the coincidence of who was born to what life is palpable. As charming and smug as he is yearning and unfulfilled, Wise’s John is both a triumphant victor and a bitter loser of games he has invented himself – both he and Julie harm themselves by harming each other, and Wise and Eldred make this pain visceral and truthful.

One could argue that there's nothing new here, this is just another production of Miss Julie with a decades-old translation and not a word or direction altered. I would instead argue that Harrison’s Julie marinades in the familiar, and revels in what is already there in Strindberg’s story – Julie and John’s games are still so fresh and so their power dynamics so relatable, why change them now? Even Kim Davies, when writing the loosely adapted Smoke, saw that the most transferable part of Miss Julie was its astute sense of power imbalances, and how they can be pushed to dangerous limits.

Commanding and elegant, Lidless’ Miss Julie is an utter triumph. Making the intimate space feel that much smaller in its insular, arresting vision, and supported by a trio of brilliant, well-cast actors, this is a classic revisited with fresh eyes. A strong case for keeping classic texts just as they are, and for trusting in a director’s vision and a casts ability to breathe new life into old words, this is a production not to be missed.

Miss Julie plays at the Park Theatre until July 6th

For tickets and information visit https://parktheatre.co.uk/event/miss-julie/

Photos by Mark Senior