Guns of August

Miss Julie

By August Strindberg

Directed by Adam Hyman

At the North House Holmes Living Room

Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:00

It would be easy to dismiss Miss Julie as just another battle-of-the-sexes play and forget that August Strindberg's compression of dramatic form, use of prosaic, everyday language and intense psychological probing were innovations a century ago. Fortunately, a talented North House cast restores the play's power.

Miss Julie is a long one-act play revolving around a single crisis. During the festival of Midsummer Eve, when rules of social interaction are gleefully abandoned, the count's daughter Miss Julie (Patricia Goldman) flirts brazenly with her father's valet, Jean (Daniel Hurewitz), in front of Jean's fiancee, the cook Christine (Martha Lane Moore). It is not clear who is seducing whom, but Julie and Jean soon overcome their inhibitions, and when Christine falls asleep, the two find an excuse to flee to the bedroom. Immediately after, they realize that the ensuing scandal could destroy them both, and in their argument over how to escape their predicament, each tries to drag the other through the slime of ultimate degradation.

This war of words, which takes up most of the play, proves a Freudian playground, as Julie and Jean reveal the deep-seated psychological reason behind the simultaneous attraction and loathing each feels for the other. But Miss Julie is more than just a battle of the sexes. The play is also a condemnation of an aristocracy so decadent that its hypocrisy has infected the servant class as well. It has been argued that Strindberg is a misogynist who places too much of the blame on Julie and punishes her too harshly. But Jean proves to be just as manipulative--and ultimately, just as spineless--as Julie. Social entropy reduces them both to something less than human.

Why is it worthwhile, then, to spend an evening watching two unappealing characters engage in a verbal slugfest? As in the plays of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee (two acknowledged Strindberg emulators), the reason is that the struggle takes on an almost metaphysical significance--provided that the actors are in fighting shape. Fortunately, both Goldman and Hurewitz can cut the mustard, and they attack their roles (and each other) with relish.

Director Adam Hyman also deserves praise for his imaginative use of the limited potential of the Holmes Living Room as a stage and for judiciously injecting a few moments of comic relief into Miss Julie's bitter battle. For make no mistake, this little domestic drama aspires to Tragedy with a capital T, and when the catharsis finally comes, you will leave happily exhausted.