Miss Julie

The Loeb Experimental Theatre is an ideal home for Strindberg's Miss Julie. The small stage, half-enclosed by the audience, provides the intimacy that Strindberg felt was needed for a sensitive performance of the play. Working from this solid structural foundation, directress Marsha Hutchinson has captured brilliantly the wide range and staccato alternation of moods that mark the degeneration of Julie, a Swedish noblewoman.

Miss Julie, slightly maddened by her monthly indisposition and by the enchantments of Midsummer Eve, seduces Jean, her father's attractive valet. Horrified by the deed, she first begs Jean to run away with her and then, realizing his despicable nature and remembering her own pedigree, commits suicide.

Emily Levine is a magnificent Julie. Before the seduction she incorporates perfectly the two natures of a haughty aristocrat who needs a man. Her words are rightfully those of a lady, but she breathes them with the anxious half-gasps of a woman in heat. Never overacting, she sometimes shivers with desire.

After the seduction she fawns on Jean, then curses him, and finally settles into the resigned delirium that precedes her suicide. Miss Levine's long speech to Kristin, the household cook and Jean's fiancee, in which she rambles on the subject of escape to the South, is the high-point of the production.

Joel Martin's Jean is less impressive. Before the seduction, Jean should alternate rapidly between the poses of a Don Juan and of Joseph before Potiphar's wife; Martin's sometimes rat-a-tat monotone glosses over the subtle intonations suggested by the lines. He improves in the second half, as he finds his newly acquired mastery over Julie more agreeable to the limited feeling in his voice.

Lois Inman, as Kristin, reflects the confident composure of a servant who knows her station and is contemptuous of those who lack the same knowledge.

Miss Hutchinson has succeeded particularly well in her interpretation of the peasant dance coincident with the off-stage seduction. The dance is stylized and subdued, providing the audience with a pleasing respite from the dramatic illusion, and giving a distinct division to the play at the moment where master and servant exchange roles.