AFTER MISS JULIE. To 7 February.
London
AFTER MISS JULIE
by Patrick Marber
Donmar Warehouse To 7 February 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 31 January 2.30pm
Captioned 20 January
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 6624
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 January
Sex and love throws wide apart; sex and hate made natural stable-mates in a vivid new version.This is Strindberg's Miss Julie moved to post-world War II England and Patrick Marber's reworking of his 1995 TV screenplay. The relocation offsets Strindberg; rather than exploring the tensions of British society at the time. Emotions still steam rankly and there's still a greenfinch gets decapitated; no-one's gone soft.
The diamond-edge precision of Michael Grandage's production plus three fine performances make this a riveting, if not quite overwhelming, evening - clearing the varnish of mustier translations and the vagueness of 19th century Scandinavian society for British audiences. But it means John, the chauffeur magnificently played by Richard Coyle - rather than his master's daughter becomes central.
He's the person with most to gain from Labour's 1945 landslide, most to lose by ignoring his class's victory class being a vital substratum to Strindberg's play.
Placing the action at a moment of momentous change shows John's mounting ambition to be hollow. An empty wine bottle is described as like Churchill finished. Wine represents John's wannabe upward-mobility (while Julie slums it on beer). But such easy externals don't indicate a deep desire to change, any more than Julie's woolly politics indicate she understands democracy.
Strindberg had no such societal turning-point, his society resembling more the pre-war English days when Julie's mother tried out her gender-reversal project on the family estate. Kelly Reilly My thoughts are is, my feelings are hers' she says of her parents and her own psycho-emotional muddle - veers wildly between confidence, rage and pleading, but always within a limited range of vocal shaping. Rightly; this is all Julie would have acquired as her provocative postures might be learned from glossy magazines.
John sees through her oh-so-easy democratic statements, vividly undercut as she spews sexual hatred through class-based insults. He knew where he was with her benevolent aristo father joining his theatre outings, but sitting in the gods, then waiting in the car while his lordship dined.
Helen Baxendale is a smoothly determined Christine a believable servant, if hardly someone reared in a back-to-back terrace. Rightly, she doesn't overdo her victory, that of common-sense, over the impassioned pair.
Christine: Helen Baxendale
John: Richard Coyle
Miss Julie: Kelly Reilly
Director: Michael Grandage
Designer: Bunny Christie
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound: Matt McKenzie for Autograph
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer
Fight director: Terry King
2004-01-07 01:02:06