After Miss Julie, the Patrick Marber play adapted from the August Strindberg classic, is burning up the stage at the American Airlines Theater, starring the luminous Sienna Miler, incendiary Jonny Lee Miller and solid Marin Ireland.
This piece requires patience from the audience as well as the willingness to go on a roller coaster ride all over the map of fiery emotions. Directed by Mark Brokaw, this gut wrenching play transposes the 1888 classic about sex and class to an English country house in 1945.
After Miss Julie uncovers all the basest of human emotions that exist within each of us, exposing feelings surrounding love, lust, betrayal and duty. Patrick Marber is masterful at expressing the wish for the impossible, knowing that disaster lurks around every corner, but allowing the passions of love and lust to trump anything else.
Note that this play takes it's time with the action, and then explodes into wild confrontation. We are left wondering what is the real truth behind these characters? What do they really want?
The answer is that all is true and nothing is true. The one constant revealed is that human relationships are terribly complex and are swathed in fickle behaviour, fear of rejection, desire to be loved, and finally the realization that the security and comfort we know and cherish can teeter on the edge of being mortally threatened. At the bottom of all of these emotions is the drive for ultimate control.
All the actors are terrific. Broadway first timer Sienna Miller gives a wonderful layered performance as the insane, bored, lust driven, manic and over all troublemaker Miss Julie. Her prey, John, played by Jonny Lee Miller, making his Broadway debut as well, is an underling in her upper crust home and the object of her desire. However, he is engaged to be married to a fellow servant in Miss Julie's household, Christine, played by Marin Ireland. Jonny Lee Miller was a perfect choice to cast against Ms. Miller (no relation.) Their chemistry is palpable and he chews up the stage in their fiery scenes. My only note is about Marin Ireland's accent. In the beginning of the play, it seems as if she is having trouble nailing it down. She got into a groove later on and the accent issues did not seem as noticeable. But she is a wonderful actor and holds her own in a three character play with a major movie star. The trio work very well together.
Fireworks and the most intense raw emotion is brought out in After Miss Julie. You have to be wiling to go with it, otherwise you will be left tired and frustrated. There are scenes with no dialogue for 5 minutes, just a character doing mundane chores, showing the life they live. I found it interesting. Like I said, you have to be in the mood and space to simply go with the theatrical flow.
It's a great, challenging night out and if you are ready for the challenge, I say, take that roller coaster ride with Miss Julie and company.
http://www.roundabouttheatre.org
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