MISS JULIE. To 12 August.

Bath

MISS JULIE
by August Strindberg new version by Frank McGuinness

Theatre Royal in rep to 12 August 2006
7.30pm 24, 27, July, 2 Aug
2.30pm 3, 9 Aug
11.30am 12 Aug
Post-show talk 27 July
Runs 1hr 25min No interval

TICKETS: 011225 448844
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 July

Clear and forceful in acting and direction.
Evidently Strindberg’s brief, misogynistic drama needs a woman’s touch. The sex part of this dramatic struggle allows, as the playwright always does, the man more space to comment than the woman. Rachel O’Riordan’s vigorous production balances this by moving the crucial sex scene involving young Julie (one translation called it Lady Julia to emphasise her class) and her father’s servant Jean from offstage suggestiveness to centre-stage prominence.

Andrea Riseborough, bent forward over the huge kitchen table, vividly shows the novelty, delight, pain and pleasure of this first-time experience, in contrast to Jean’s regular jabbing behind her (to a remarkably-timed climax from the peasant musicians outside).

But O’Riordan’s production, in the Peter Hall Company’s 2006 Bath Season, is notable in its clear balance of sex and class as power struggles. Jean’s upward-mobility sees sex with a lady as some glass ceiling beyond the affectations of French phrases and wine with his meal.

Frank McGuinness enforces the social point by making Julie’s family English in an Ireland where the Irish are servants. There’s a tense but equal relationship between Richard Dormer’s self-confident Jean and Pauline Turner’s quiet Kristen, content with her social position, confident in her religious salvation. Into this world of understanding expressed in a casual remark or an over-the-shoulder smile, Riseborough waltzes with the casual looseness and insolently lazy voice of an over-protected childhood and confident social status (she even thinks the Irish workers love her).

But there’s been confusion of sexual roles in her upbringing, leading her over the dangerous edge to eventual madness and death. There’s rarely been so seductive a relationship with the knife with which her fate ends, just as the sound of his master’s return has the commanding Jean cowering over the lordly boots which have stood prominently throughout at the stage front.

If anyone triumphs it’s Kristin, off to church and sure of her propriety, giving orders to the servants to prevent the others’ flight. This is a play where the survivor knows her place, but in her sleepiness, and waking certitude, is least alive of the trio, as this fine production makes clear.

Miss Julie: Andrea Riseborough
Jean: Richard Dormer
Kristin: Pauline Turner

Director: Rachel O’Riordan
Designer: Kevin Rigdon
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Composer: Mick Sands
Costume: Trish Rigdon

2006-07-25 13:08:04