Miss Julie at the Jermyn Street Theatre review ***

Miss Julie

Jermyn Street Theatre, 27th November 2017

Grinding my way through the classics of naturalistic drama. Actually not grinding, that makes it sound like too much of a slog, but I can’t pretend it is all unalloyed joy. Turns out that Chekhov is likely the man for me and Ibsen works only intermittently. This was my first Miss Julie, so early days for Sweden’s finest, but based on this, and a past The Father and Creditors, I don’t think I am going to be his greatest fan. I am conscious that the critics across the spectrum lapped this up, and I can’t fault the acting, direction or staging, so any misgivings must lie in the play or possibly the adaption, here newly minted by Howard Brenton. I won’t have the latter though, since a) Howard Brenton is the gold standard in other adaptions, b) he is at pains to tell us in the text that he wanted to stay as close to the original based on the literal translation from Agnes Broome, and c) his play Pravda was the thing that turned me on to the theatre.

Now it strikes me that, for a claustrophobic play set solely in the kitchen of a Swedish manor house, want you want is a claustrophobic theatre and a set which captures said kitchen. Which is precisely what you get from Louie Whitemore. In immense detail. With kidneys frying on the stove. Director Tom Littler, now in the hot-seat at JST, is happy to let Izabella Urbanowicz who plays cook Kristin prepare and cook the meal before James Sheldon’s valet Jean bounds in after having dropped into the Midsummer’s party we can hear going on in the background (courtesy of Max Pappenheim’s sound design). So a confident start. A bit of gentle banter about Miss Julie’s erratic behaviour and some gentle exchanges between the couple and we’re all set for the arrival of the eponymous flirt. I think Izabella Urbanowicz nailed Kristin’s cautious conservatism, (we see it later with references to her faith), and her utilitarian approach to her choice of husband to be. James Sheldon in contrast exuded a kind of boyish restlessness that served him well in the dialogue with each of the women. There was affection between the servant couple, no doubt, but also, I sensed a slight distance.

So all looking good for Charlotte Hamblin’s white-dressed Miss Julie to set the ball rolling towards the sex, anger, imagined disgrace and disappointment which follows. I gather Ms Hamblin is famous for being some-one in Downton Abbey, so this upstairs/downstairs stuff was presumably a breeze for her. I have seen a few bios which include everyone’s favourite period drama, and it has so far proved to be a mark of quality for the stage performance. Which therefore makes it mystifying as to why Downton Abbey itself is so unbelievably bad. Anyway Ms Hamblin was suitably bored, sexy, desperate and rash and Mr Sheldon was suitably horny, angry, boorish and rash to make the attraction very believable. She gets to lash out at the way she is shackled by class and status. So does he. But we are also acutely aware from the off that the distance between is not as great as it seems and, at the societal level, is starting to close. So it’s all there.

My marginal unease comes as we move into the “what are we going to do now” bit. Miss Julie’s collapse into nervous panic and Jean’s swinging mixture of motives are all part of the fun I guess but it tested my patience and I started to drift away from proceedings. Passion can veer from love to hate in an instance, and passion across class barriers is never going to end well for one, or the other or both. AS however seems to want to have his cake and eat it, then whip out another cake and have another go, as the couple ride their emotional rollercoaster. Miss Julie is the victim in this production but that only serves to heighten Strindberg’s not so buried misogyny.

As you can see I am confused and need to think a bit more about this. Must try harder. At the end of the day though I can’t pretend I was gripped throughout and, if this production is as adept as the critics have said, then I may have to conclude that AS is out of my limited reach. Never mind, there’s lots more theatre to explore.