Class divide, battle of the sexes and evolution of mankind are big issues that are brought together in the passionate and cruel play Miss Julie– set in Sweden in 1888 yet as relevant today as ever, says Karen Morley-Chesworth
Howard Brenton’s new adaptation of August Strinberg’s Miss Julie holds no punches. It focuses on the upstairs, downstairs relationship, which causes the upper-class Miss Julie played brilliantly with haughty, yet raw passion by Charlotte Hamblin, to descend into madness.
Her weakness for valet Jean highlights the powerlessness of women in a male dominated system. Despite her wealth, education and standing, the consequences of their shared actions have a disproportionate negative impact on her life and mental health than on that of the lower classed male, with no financial or ancestral benefits.
However, her mother had been of lower class, seducing an aristocrat – and history appears to have repeated itself, with the female life destroyed.
Jean, played by handsome James Sheldon is as determined to break through the class barriers, as Miss Julie is to escape herself and dependency on the male line. He captures that self-determination and cruelty beautifully.
Caught in the crossfire is the hard working, respectable cook and Jean’s fiancée Kristin, played with genteel honesty by Izabella Urbanowicz. Her wordless motions preparing, cleaning, serving food on a loop captures the monotonous life, in which she has little time to think too deeply about love.
She knows her place, steps back to let her mistress dance with her love. She looks up ‘to my betters’ and believes God will protect her soul.
However, Miss Julie says her education doesn’t allow her the pleasure of deceiving herself that God will save, her which Kristin ‘enjoys’.
The women are pitted against each other by society, a male dominated structure. Kristin looks down upon Miss Julie over her inappropriate behaviour for her status, while Miss Julie looks down upon Kristin as a servant, not a woman or person of feelings. They are both held, snared in a position to which they cannot escape.
Hamblin changes before your eyes from the self-confident mistress Miss Julie into the mad woman she fears from her childhood. This is a stunning, and frightening performance.
This is no romantic image of life in the big house. This is a gritty, passionate and bloody battle of the sexes, in which each are using the other under a veneer of love, which soon begins to crack.
Miss Julie packs as much drama into the two hours as a whole boxset of Downton. Don’t expect a ‘Mills and Boon’, however do go for a roller-coaster ride through emotions as old as time with a freshness that has you gripped.
Brenton has done an excellent job of writing this new adaptation, and the trio of Urbanowicz, Sheldon and Hamblin deliver it with guts, the deepest emotions and mesmerising performance.
5 out of 5 stars.
- Miss Julie by August Stringberg runs in The Studio, Theatre by the Lake until November 3, 2017.
