Miss Julie (first produced in 1889) is an important play in the history of modern theater, one that demonstrated a thoroughgoing naturalism when such a thing was still controversial, and that also brought to the stage a daring degree of sexual candor. In its tale of a young aristocratic woman who lusts after her father's valet, it gave author August Strindberg a chance to weigh in on class and gender conflicts, and to create two memorable characters as notable for their contradictions as for their consistencies.
The good news for local theatergoers is that the current freeFall Theatre version of Miss Julie is first-class in every way: acting, directing, set and costume design. The bad news is, the play itself can, to moderns, feel windy and overlong (even at 90 minutes), and the class issues especially can feel irrelevant to a contemporary American (we may be a plutocracy, but we're not an aristocracy).
Still, the pluses outdo the minuses in this fine production, directed impeccably by Eric Davis. If you don't mind the occasional longueurs, it's worth your attention.
The play takes place in real time one Midsummer Eve, and introduces us to Jean the valet, his lover Christine (a cook) and the boss's daughter Julie. Julie, it seems, likes to hang out with the help — and she's been showing special attention lately to cautious, I-know-my-place Jean. When he tries to put her off, she just becomes more avid; and when she insists that he kiss her foot, he dutifully obliges — and then some. Finally, this unlikely couple gets down to business.
The consummation occurs offstage, but when Julie and Jean reappear, it's clear that everything has changed. Now they have to decide what sort of future is possible for them. Shall they run off to Lake Como and open a hotel? Shall they make their way to Romania, where Jean can purchase a title? Or will Julie's training as a man-hater and Jean's indoctrination as a lackey keep them from fully breaking those taboos they've already started to challenge?
There's sexual grappling, fierce recriminations, desperate pleas for help, violence involving a small bird — and there's also Christine, who really hates it when the upper classes get vulgar. Finally we discover what happens when a woman who dreams only of falling meets up with a man who dreams only of rising. A clue: crash.
Geneva Rae plays Julie, and it's a persuasive performance. Rae's Julie is a sado-masochistic sensualist, deeply attracted to Jean but too young and inexperienced to make sense of their liaison once it's sexually established. As Jean, James Oliver is arrogantly sure of himself — except where his boss the Count is concerned — and sex with Julie just makes him stronger and more decisive. Meg Heimstead as Christine is appropriately prosaic, confident that in the afterlife class roles will be reversed, and no more threatened by Julie than by aliens from the planet Neptune.
Greg Bierce's attractive set features an unpolished wooden floor on which an exceedingly long wooden table sits, and an unusually shaped wall that precisely mirrors the design of an onstage birdcage (get it — macrocosm to microcosm?). Director Davis designed the 1920s-style costumes as well, from Julie's flapper outfit to the epically boring earth-colored clothes that poor Christine has to wear. Jean wears livery at first, then is ordered by Julie to put on the Count's coat, then loses some clothing in the aftermath of the sexual encounter.
There's only one flaw in the staging, and that's what happens — or doesn't happen — on stage while Julie and Jean are off mating. Strindberg's script calls for the reveling villagers to invade the set, sing and dance and carouse and finally return to their outdoor party. But Davis has only a single villager appear — no doubt for economic reasons — and this intruder, his head covered by a pig mask, runs around the stage nonsensically, creates a few sorts of disorder, and then leaves. Who he is, why he's there, how he fits in the evening's naturalism — all this remains a mystery. Even a lighting-and-sound-effects solution would be less jarring.
But this is a small complaint. In every other way, freeFall's Miss Julie is about as good an interpretation of Strindberg's classic as you're likely to see. Yes, the play is dated, and no, it doesn't work if you imagine the Count as a 19th-century Bill Gates. But Strindberg's mind was so strange, his dramaturgy so progressive, there's still a great deal to like here. Think: utterly professional. And yet another reason to welcome freeFall.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2011.