Miss Julie

Simon Stone rewrites theatre classics, freely setting them in modern day Australia. He’s done aWild Duck ‘after Ibsen’, aCherry Orchard ‘after Chekhov’ and now here’s his Miss Julie ‘after Strindberg’. You’ve got to admire his chutzpah and his keen theatrical brain.

Strindberg’s 1888 pairing of a high-class Count’s daughter with a class-conscious footman is here transformed/stoned into the let-it-rip coupling of a national politician’s 16-year-old daughter with her much older armed bodyguard. Age difference has been added to class and sex differences. And where Strindberg suggested there might have been some off-stage hanky-panky between the two, Stone and his director, Leticia Cáceres, give us buckets of nudity and genital groping.

The classic one-acter has here been given an interval to allow for a radical change of setting — from the politician’s swanky kitchen to the motel room to which these cursing, shouting, mismatched lovers come to a sticky, unStrindbergian end. Both locations are handsomely designed by Robert Cousins and lit by Damien Cooper.

The acting is first rate. Brendan Cowell gives bodyguard Jean the hulking build of a Rugby League front rower, plus the confusion of a good man in the grip of something he can’t possibly control. Blazey Best as his fiancée Christine cooks salmon risotto as the audience assembles: she convinces utterly as the reliable, put-upon housekeeper determined to hold on to her difficult man-child.

Taylor Ferguson is Julie, precociously intelligent, deeply unhappy, manipulative, “a fucking nightmare” to her minder. “I can’t believe I’ve lowered myself to this level,” she wails as the action slowly intensifies. It’s a no-holds-barred, career-launching performance.

Frank Hatherley

Images: Brendan Cowell and Taylor Ferguson & Brendan Cowell and Blazey Best. Photographer: Ellis Parrinder.