On the heels of Simon
Stone’s previous work, I was admittedly dreading his adaptation of
Strindberg’s Miss Julie, with its
reputation as a “hallmark of the misogynist theatrical canon,” as director
Leticia Cáceres puts it. In Cáceres’ hands however, this production of Miss Julie
transcends its superficial labels and becomes a harrowing piece of theatre, one
that problematises its subject matter and tries to unpick it, works to present
a solution to it.
One of theatre’s
‘great’ feuding couples, Miss Julie
is the story of Julie, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a prominent politician,
and Jean, the man hired by her father to look after her. In the mode of writers
like Chekhov or Shakespeare, Miss Julie
is all at once about class and transcending the limitations of your class,
while also not being about class at all but rather about lust and desire. It’s
a toxic play, intense and unrelenting, but in Stone’s version – freely adapted
from Strindberg’s 1888 play – there is something else, too. There’s almost a
humanness that ripples through its two-hours running time, and in light of his
previous work in Sydney
