It’s an intimate set. At the centre is a dimly lit table, with one plate, a vase of fresh purple flowers, and an unlit candle. The seats around the table are empty, but not much further back are the seats of the audience, positioned in the round of the Park90 stage in Finsbury Park’s wonderful Park Theatre.
Showed powerful potential, but overshot in its volume of delivery
The setting for Lidless Theatre Company's production of August Strindberg’s 1888 classic, Miss Julie - directed by Max Harrison - invites an immediate air of intensity. It asks to be scrutinised, as we sit, awkwardly close to its edges, waiting for the stage to ignite with the classic story of love, lust, and entrapment.
What does eventually unfurl is a claustrophobic ordeal, not just of Strindberg’s dark social critique, but rather of being hemmed in by a constant, discomforting shouting that casts a disappointingly one-dimensional light on the performance.
The story itself is told true to Michael Meyer’s 1965 translation, as it charts one tumultuous Midsummer's Eve, where a bold, bored young lady descends on her servants' quarters and attempts to entice Jean, her father's valet, much to the quiet contempt of his fiancé, Christine the cook. Over 75 fast minutes, the performance plummets into a fight for power and dominance between two lustful individuals, trapped by the prisons of gender and class.
The young Miss Julie, played by Katie Eldred, is provocative and pouty. In her first appearance, as she attempts to entice Jean for a second dance in the upper celebrations, she is vivacious and sultry, later powerfully demanding he should kiss her boot as she taunts the control her class allows. As the play unfurls however, this control is tested, as her sex and gender is pitted against her, and her reputation - essential for her upper-class survival - is hung dangerously in front of her. Eldred performs with a nuanced control of her character's emotional demise, sharply shifting from wit and a high-class charm, to despair and despondency at her situation.
Opposite her, Freddie Wise is a powerful and arrogant Jean who dreams of escaping his servitude. In showing his character's cruel undertones however, Wise reaches an emotional, and audible, peak early on, leaving him nowhere to go as the drama unfolds. As a result, the to-and-fro of his character's cruel romantic escapades is slightly flat, missing some of the nuance held in the script.
By shouting much of his dialogue, the development of a genuine romantic or lustful relationship between either Miss Julie, or his fiancé the cook, is curbed. Where Julie was at times doting and reverent, his Jean was constantly irritated and churlish.
Furthermore, the pitch means that the play's most climactic moments, such as the killing of Julie’s beloved greenfinch, are delivered barely a notch above the rest of the drama. Whilst certainly powerful, a more tamed performance from Wise would have created more emotional investment into the supposed vulnerabilities of his own class entrapments.
Despite occupying the least time on stage, it is Adeline Waby’s Christine, whose presence is felt most strongly. She gives the most time to each movement, to each line, and eventually to the sudden emotional outburst that holds substantial weight in their refrain and rarity.
In one poignant scene, she is alone, listening to the murmured movements of her fiancé and mistress dancing together. In her silence, she portrays a palpable disappointment that lasts an unnervingly long time. In another moment, she resets the table to represent a drunken revelry she was not part of, whilst onstage her partner and her mistress unleash their desires in his room off stage. Her slow, pragmatic movements are an intimate break from the drama that unfolds brutally around her.
This rendition of Miss Julie showed powerful potential, but the night's performance overshot in its volume of delivery. There was space for nuance in all the performances, but in the moment, I was too preoccupied by the desire for just a little bit of quiet.
