Book (Play) Review: Miss Julie, August Strindberg

This play takes only a couple of hours to read, but if you are anything like me, your mind will be turning it over for weeks to come. 

I stumbled across the trailer for its latest incarnation, starring Jessica Chastain in the title role.  Thinking it felt familiar, I did further research and realised that I had seen an earlier adaptation years before, starring a luminous Saffron Burrows as Julie.  Upon further research I found a 1987 adaption featuring Janet McTeer, and even a post-war re-interpretation with Geraldine Somerville.  And these are just some of the English language performances of this play.  I watched all these versions (and will no doubt see the Jessica Chastain version when it hits Australian cinemas).  I realise this may seem somewhat obsessive.  Perhaps it was.  I can attribute this obsession party to too much free time (uni student on holidays), but in fact, it is also partly the nature of the work.  Even after watching all these versions, as well as reading the original play, I still find myself wondering about the relationship between Julie and Jean, specifically about the various power plays at work. 

The action takes place over the course of one Swedish Midsummer evening.  Miss Julie is the lady of the house; the only one left upstairs after her father has gone to celebrate the evening elsewhere.  Jean, the valet, and his fiancé Christine, the cook, are the only staff left downstairs in the kitchen.  The raucous celebrations of the other staff take place elsewhere; their cheers and drunken singing sometimes heard off in the distance, like the menacing rumble of distant thunder.

Miss Julie ventures downstairs. 

What happens between Julie and Jean?  Is it a class war?  A gender war?  A love story?  In this late nineteenth century Swedish society, who is at a greater disadvantage?  A patrician woman or a plebian man?  When both fall, who will rise again? 

All the more interesting is watching the different incarnations in the play.  It was interesting to see how differently directors could interpret, essentially the same script.  Some versions seemed like a colourless translation, while others had the rhythm of poetry. 

I think I found the Saffron Burrows version the most interesting and nuanced, both for its directing, and for the insanely strong performances from Ms Burrows and Peter Mullan.  I also think I had better access the Julie’s inner life through Ms Burrows, rather than being baffled and irritated by Julie’s sometimes seemingly irrational behaviour.  She has strength and intelligence, but she has been hot-housed for so long, she has no idea how to direct any of that energy.    

Both characters seem to have slipped their moorings as they ricochet between desire, disgust and desperation with dizzying speed.  In some versions I went with them on that rollercoaster; felt, even if I didn’t understand, the bewilderment.  Other versions seemed flatter; Julie was spoilt and capricious, while Jean was a vicious and ruthless social climber, discarding Julie when she became neither use nor ornament.  All these things are true, but not only these things.     

I think these questions are best left open, rather than neatly resolved.  The play is more of a question than an answer.  I will certainly be reading more Strindberg in future.