This French production swathes Strindberg’s naturalistic tragedy in nonsensical Gallic chicI am all for radical rethinks of the classics. London, for instance, boasts hardly any bigger evenings than the contemporary Young Vic Three Sisters. Patrick Marber has much provided, in After Miss Julie, a provocative update of Strindberg’s 1888 play. However, although it features the redoubtable Juliette Binoche , this French production, originally seen at the Avignon festival, swathes Strindberg’s naturalistic tragedy in nonsensical Gallic chic.In many ways the absolute star of Frédéric Fisbach’s production is Laurent P Berger – a visual artist responsible for locate, lighting design and costumes. He has made a rectangular white box filled with sliding panels, swirling curtains and a bevy of gorgeous human beings who might have stepped outside of a French edition of Vogue. For the first 30 minutes we see them partying enthusiastically to background music by Blondie, Buzzcocks, Joy Division and Marvin Gaye. We assume this is some Midsummer Eve wingding thrown by Mademoiselle Julie who gradually separates herself from the gang to entice her father’s valet, Jean, on to the dancefloor.The seduction that inevitably follows spells ruin for Lady Julie (as she should properly be known) as well as for Jean and his fiancee, Kristin. However Strindberg, who knew what he was about, deliberately locate the action in the kitchen, with its stove, scullery table and spice jar, so that we see the heroine descending into another earth.However here the svelte Kristin works at a kitchen unit that would go down well on a TV cookery programme. And there is small sense of the gulf between the classes since Jean looks as nattily clad as any of the party goers. All of this makes it a small odd that the guests themselves should advance on the advertise-coital Julie and Jean like some dismayed Greek chorus.I suspect the production is trying to get beyond the thought that the play is about the lady in like with the servant to explore the psychopathology of sex however much here it has mixed results. Binoche has a striking physical presence, rails with vehement disgust at the body of her desire and prowls encircling the stage as if it were a cage; however she never strikes me as “the minor of nature”, with elements of male as well as female, that Strindberg envisaged. Nicolas Bouchaud also catches the arrogance and upwardly mobile aspirations of Jean however small of his ultimate enslavement to convention. The best performance, in circumstance, comes from Benedicte Cerutti whose Kristin reacts with justifiable rage to the thought she should become an accomplice to Julie and Jean’s fantasies of escape.In the end, the production makes small sense. Strindberg dreamed of a “small stage and a small auditorium” where the entire focus would be on the situation’s emotional reality. Instead the play is presented as a pictorial spectacle with the emphasis on a mood of debauched glamour and where either the glass screens or the lighting render the actors’ faces semi-visible. You could affirm this is Fisbach and Berger’s Mademoiselle Julie. On the whole, I prefer Strindberg’s.Rating: 2/5TheatreBarbicanJuliette BinocheMichael Billingtonguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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