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After Miss Julie

  • opened: 11/25/2003
  • closed: 2/7/2004
  • Donmar Warehouse
  • Box Office: 08700 060 6624
  • Details: 25 Nov 2003-7 Feb 2004
  • Summary: Visit theARCHIVE to hear a discussion.In his introduction to After Miss Julie, the playwright Patrick Marber wrote that "I have been unfaithful to the original. But conscious that the infidelity might be an act of love." Glowing reviews have largely conceded that Marber's infidelity has been worth it, especially his decision to update Strindberg's 1888 naturalist classic to Britain in 1945, the night after Labour's election victory. Originally broadcast on the BBC in 1995, After Miss Julie has now come to the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Kelly Reilly as Miss Julie, Richard Coyle as John, and Helen Baxendale as Christine. Upstairs, a rowdy party celebrates a pivotal moment of social change, while downstairs even more anarchic forces try to destroy the barriers of class and gender that eventually spell Miss Julie's ruin. In The Guardian Michael Billington gave the production four stars and asserted that "by relocating the action to the night of Labour's landslide election victory in 1945, Patrick Marber not only sharpens the social context but restores the original's tragic impact......the real virtue of Marber's version is that it refreshes an old play and reminds us that it is as much about psychological disintegration as the never-ending sex and class wars." Charles Spencer declared in The Telegraph that: "Miss Julie has never seemed more relevant, or more resonant.......Kelly Reilly brilliantly captures the spoilt hauteur and louche sensuality of Miss Julie, but, as she faces the prospect of public shame, she also makes you feel genuine concern for this sexually voracious yet emotionally frigid woman, driven to the point of no return by her passion and her class." In The Times, which awarded the production three stars, Benedict Nightingale was more reserved in his praise, commenting: "What does Patrick Marber add to Strindberg’s Miss Julie by transporting it from 1880s Sweden to England on July 26, 1945? Not a lot." However he concedes that, "As directed by Michael Grandage, and performed by Richard Coyle, Kelly Reilly and a wonderfully prim, uptight yet tough-minded Helen Baxendale as John’s fiancée and Julie’s cook, the result is gripping from first to last." In the Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh, exclaimed: "It is ages since any London stage was so riven with sexual danger and risk-taking or so steeped in sadomasochistic power-games. As an upper-crust young lady with erotic ideas several rungs beneath her social station Kelly Reilly strips herself psychically bare with a raw thoroughness few young actresses could achieve." In the Independent Paul Taylor was equally complimentary, saying, " Kelly Reilly is utterly transfixing as Julie. An uppity little madam with the unreal sexiness of a nubile doll, she behaves like a child acting out an un-consciously grotesque parody of sophisticated adulthood. She also lets you see that this shrill cock-tease is a lost soul, screwed up by the combination of her mother's half-baked feminism and her father's detachment." In the Financial Times, Alastair Macaulay observed: "Michael Grandage's production - though I think After Miss Julie might have more force if it were played with the loaded rhythmic tension of Pinter or Mamet - is utterly engrossing in its way. Kelly Reilly's classy little nymphet Julie is an unfolding amazement, engrossing even as she grows more maddening, more crazed."
  • Author: Strindberg/Patrick Marber
  • Director: Michael Grandage
  • Composer: n/a
  • Lyricist: n/aSet Designer: Bunny Christie
  • Lighting Designer: Neil Austin
  • Costume Designer: n/a
  • Choreographer: n/a
  • Cast Details: Helen Baxendale (Christine); Richard Coyle (John); Kelly Reilly (Miss Julie).
  • Reference: More Info