Chicago theater is having an August Strindberg moment. Hot on the heels of “The Dance of Death” at Steppenwolf Theatre comes a chilly and grotesque “Miss Julie” at Court Theatre. Whee!
Opening night was Valentine’s Day, because nothing says romance so much as a twisted, psychosexual drama about a doomed kitchen assignation between a hyped-up Swedish noblewoman and her scheming manservant.
Theaters are under no obligation to genuflect to the calendar, of course. But it looks like the programming at Court has gone a little haywire this winter. The arriving artistic director, Avery Willis Hoffman, needs to hit the reset button. Hard.
“Miss Julie” is, for sure, a famous play and, given its toxic mix of gender, sex and power, it has long attracted the attention of directors who consider themselves edgy or avant-garde. Indeed, it has rewarded such approaches. A brilliant 1997 Anne Bogart production at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, which pulsed with rock music and set the play inside a wrestling ring, still lives in my head after nearly 30 years. That one (starring Jefferson Mays and Ellen Lauren) used a livelier, more women-focused translation by Helen Cooper than the older (and boring) Harry G. Carlson translation currently in play at Court. But honestly, the translation is not really the issue in director Gabrielle Randle-Bent’s production.
The problem is that you just don’t believe any of the three characters in the show — a show that separates the actors from the audience behind a scrim for the entire 95 minutes — actually desire any of the other characters. And yet, however you shake down Strindberg, or wherever or whenever you set the action in his plays, that’s the whole shebang. “The Dance of Death” is a dance with death; “Miss Julie” is a dance of desire. Leading to death, you could argue, petit or otherwise. But a dance of desire nonetheless.
Sure, you get the sense here that Jean (Kelvin Roston Jr.) worries about the potential fallout from what his boss Miss Julie (Mi Kang) wants from him, but not that he sees an upside to said requests as Sweden explodes all around him in a burst of Midsummer fertility. You get the sense that Jean’s fellow-servant girlfriend, the cook Kristine (Rebecca Spence), also worries about the couple’s mutual fate once Miss Julie is unleashed but, in this staging, that concern comes off as a normal person fearing the disruptions of the unbalanced, not the sexual or romantic jealousy the play demands. And while you certainly see that Miss Julie has taken leave of her senses this night, it is never clear why she is coming for Jean because you intuit no actual susceptibility to her own feelings. Rather, she is played as a grotesque in a pastiche, right down to the classic physical writhing on the kitchen counter and the smeared lipstick on her face. That way, alas, lies cliché. And zero sexual tension.
Certainly, there is humor. Certainly, risks are taken. Certainly, a few moments work along with some of the ideas. Certainly, John Culbert’s set has a latent beauty, especially as you first walk into the theater.
There is a long, silent ballet at the start of the show, wherein Spence’s Kristine kneads and bakes a loaf of bread, but it was never clear to me in service of what, beyond a fatalistic sense of doom. But that can’t be enough with this play.
I mean no disrespect to any of these artists, all of whom I’ve seen do excellent work in the past. “Miss Julie” is a very difficult show to do today.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Miss Julie” (2.5 stars)
When: Through March 8
Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Tickets: $60-$90 at 773-753-4472 and courttheatre.org
