Dalliance comes across as stiff, tepid

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This article was published 24/01/2011 (5701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WITH duelling adaptations of the once notorious Miss Julie at StrindbergFest comparisons are inevitable.

The higher profile of the two is a professional production of After Miss Julie — relocated by English dramatist Patrick Marber to post-World War II Britain — a sexy, hot-blooded affair between a reckless, aristocratic young woman who has a fling with her father’s chauffeur/valet, Jean.

Running concurrently until last night is the Winnipeg Mennonite Theatre’s Miss Julie, which returns the action to its traditional setting of 19th century Sweden. In doing so, the community stage troupe regains some Nordic coolness, propriety and a sense of its original shock over its raw depiction of gender and class warfare. A disappointing side effect is that a great deal of the necessary passion and heat have been drained, leaving a stiff and tame depiction of one of theatre’s most famous destructive dalliance.

As well, for some curious and unexplained reason the WMT opts for the Frank McGuinness adaptation without placing Miss Julie in rural Northern Ireland. Where is not as important as when the social stays between the classes are loosened. Having the revelry take place on the lusty, pagan holiday of Midsummer’s eve is more believable than Marber’s election night euphoria.

Director Ben Wiebe doesn’t deviate too noticeably from the original translation and pares back the country manor kitchen setting to a minimum table and chairs. A welcome addition is an energetic throng of servants and children, outfitted in colourful traditional dress. They perform a Maypole, no that should be a Mayboy, dance in which a youngster stands on a chair atop the kitchen table while the celebrants wrap and unwrap him in ribbon. That the kids stay on stage watching the mutually misguided seductions may be another reason for the toned-down eroticism.

In the title role, Ali Tataryn is tall, attractive and naturally conveys an upper crust bearing, so it is easy to see why the servant Jean has lusted over the privileged Miss Julie all his life. Her stop-and-go come-ons to the humble, aspiring Jean don’t crackle and ultimately lack impact, which is not helped by the languid pace of the 90-minute drama. Adam Hurtig’s Jean is more successful at getting closer to the savagery that Miss Julie provokes in him. Both actors are robbed in a key scene of the power generated by their first kiss when a music cue started too early, drowning out the lead-up exchange.

If you attended the last two MTC productions — Brief Encounter and After Miss Julie — as well as Miss Julie, you might have noticed that all three feature love affairs begun by one of the couple getting something stuck in their eye and the other attempting to remove it. In the latter, she brazenly sits in Jean’s lap, signalling her sexual intentions and her surrender to the needs of the flesh. It was one of the few moments that this Miss Julie brought out all the ardour embedded in Strindberg’s script.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

 

TheatreReview

Miss Julie

— Winnipeg Mennonite Theatre

— Park Theatre

3 out of five stars