Castes Exposed In A Class Act
The Age
Monday April 23, 2007
THEATRE REVIEW: AFTER MISS JULIE
By Patrick Marber,Red Stitch Actors Theatre,April 20 until May 19.Running time: 90 minutes.www.redstitch.netROYAL gossip mongers have been salivating this past week over the demise of Prince William's long-term relationship with Kate Middleton. Speculation for the break-up has centred on the social unacceptability of the prospective mother-in-law - it seems that in the eyes of upper-class snobs you can't take the "middle" out of Middleton. This tension in inter-class relationships is the driving issue in British playwright Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie, the latest production by Red Stitch Actors Theatre. The play examines the social gulf between the aristocratic Julie and the object of her lust, her father's working-class chauffeur.Marber's work is a free adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, a classic of early naturalism. Where Strindberg's eponym shocked 19th century audiences with her frank display of sexual desire, this is hardly an issue today. But as the week's headlines show, anxiety about class miscegenation remains.Marber, to emphasise the class tension, sets the play in the kitchen of Miss Julie's family estate on the night of the British Labour Party's landslide victory in 1945. The servants are celebrating and Julie stays behind to fraternise with them.Sarah Sutherland brings style to the role of Miss Julie, pursuing the chauffeur with a mixture of coquetry and authority, one minute begging him to kiss her foot, the next slapping his face. But as the situation - and Julie's composure - collapses, Sutherland becomes a little breathless in conveying the mad contrariness of her character.Daniel Frederiksen is the chauffeur John, a servant who should know better than to accept his mistress's advances, but who reveals himself as a grasping opportunist. Frederiksen's nervous physicality expresses John's initial indecision, but he could convey more moral panic later in the play.The counterpoint to both these characters is Christine, supposedly engaged to John. Olivia Connolly is excellent in portraying her grim stoicism, measuring out her facial expressions like pennies in a household budget. Great stuff.Red Stitch's production is entirely faithful to the naturalism of Strindberg's original. There is no amplification of voices, no soundtrack filling in audio space. Director Denis Moore brings an almost forgotten grace to the simple domesticity of the scene, especially in the first half of the play. As the narrative tension increases, however, the dramatic tone doesn't quite keep pace.Marber's script retraces the same ground a few times, but there could be more intensity in the later scenes. It's here, too, that the very British themes and context of this play ultimately lack traction with a contemporary Australian audience.
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