Word: missed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Miss Julie...
...would be easy to dismiss Miss Julie as just another battle-of-the-sexes play and forget that August Strindberg's compression of dramatic form, use of prosaic, everyday language and intense psychological probing were innovations a century ago. Fortunately, a talented North House cast restores the play's power...
...Miss Julie is a long one-act play revolving around a single crisis. During the festival of Midsummer Eve, when rules of social interaction are gleefully abandoned, the count's daughter Miss Julie (Patricia Goldman) flirts brazenly with her father's valet, Jean (Daniel Hurewitz), in front of Jean's fiancee, the cook Christine (Martha Lane Moore). It is not clear who is seducing whom, but Julie and Jean soon overcome their inhibitions, and when Christine falls asleep, the two find an excuse to flee to the bedroom. Immediately after, they realize that the ensuing scandal could destroy them both...
This war of words, which takes up most of the play, proves a Freudian playground, as Julie and Jean reveal the deep-seated psychological reason behind the simultaneous attraction and loathing each feels for the other. But Miss Julie is more than just a battle of the sexes. The play is also a condemnation of an aristocracy so decadent that its hypocrisy has infected the servant class as well. It has been argued that Strindberg is a misogynist who places too much of the blame on Julie and punishes her too harshly. But Jean proves to be just as manipulative...
Director Adam Hyman also deserves praise for his imaginative use of the limited potential of the Holmes Living Room as a stage and for judiciously injecting a few moments of comic relief into Miss Julie's bitter battle. For make no mistake, this little domestic drama aspires to Tragedy with a capital T, and when the catharsis finally comes, you will leave happily exhausted...