Where's me Julie?
Strindberg is often overlooked as the poor relative of Ibsen, and yet Sean O'Casey gets it right when he says: 'While Ibsen sits in his Doll's House, Strindberg is battling with his heaven and hell.' In his half a dozen plays which centre largely on the viciousness of women, we encounter such wasted emotional landscapes as are not to be encountered again before the plays of Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and Eugene O'Neil. Thankfully, Ed McGown's production delivers in losing none of the naturalistic rawness that Strindberg intended.
Miss Julie relates the story of an upper class gentlewomen, daughter of a firebrand mother, who one night seduces the personal valet of her father. The play proceeds rather like Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as the pair tease, flirt and row their way through the night. All too easily this play can be reduced to a Lady Chatterly-esque tale of a na•ve mistress being simply overcome by the earthy sexuality of a man from the lower orders. Similarly, Jean, the servant, can quite easily emerge as a cynical social climber, hungry only for the power that sex can grant him. Rob Crumpton, however, excels not only in showing us the terrifyingly violent side of Jean's character, yet also in showing us his tenderness. Miss Julie (Emma Campbell-Webster), meanwhile, emerges as at once a coquette - arrogant and sexual - and a woman strangely unsure of her own desires. As a result, she succeeds in giving us a portrait of what approaches an extreme psychosis as her character successively screams insults and the next moment begs to be beaten. To her credit, Campbell-Webster manages the transition with considerable aplomb.
In all, this is a stand-out theatrical evening that deserves to be seen. Ben Morgan
3rd May 2001