Review: AFTER MISS JULIE at Park Theatre

Instead of a Swedish Count’s estate on midsummers eve in the 1880s, we leap forward, transported to the large English country house of a Labour MP on 1945’s election night. As the results begin to filter through and celebrations get underway, it is clear that Churchill’s post-war landslide election defeat is becoming a reality. With Clement Attlee’s Labour Party ready to form a government, society is about to undergo some significant changes, not least around the established roles of master and servant as the old class order gives way to the post-war era.

Meanwhile devout Scottish Presbyterian Christine (Charlene Boyd) still feels very much at home in her servitude, dutifully executing her cooking and cleaning duties, exhausted but content. Part of that contentment is borne of her relationship with John (Tom Varey) the master’s Chauffeur who returns late to eat a plate of kidneys with the pilfered remnants of a bottle of Burgundy after having been waylaid by Miss Julie (Liz Francis) upstairs at the party celebrations as she dances with every young man of the household. As the pair speak (appropriately below stairs, in the kitchen) it is suggested that the young lady of the house is perhaps a little drunk and even that her behaviour towards the servants is excessively familiar. It is the first reference to the crossing of those societal boundaries and how the lower classes can sometimes be the most entrenched snobs by declaring pride in knowing their place and being vehemently critical of anyone who doesn’t adhere to the established rules.

When Miss Julie enters the kitchen looking to be further entertained, she flirts, smokes and drinks with John, complimenting him on the way he leads and inferring her sexual desire. That she does so in front of Christine, is indicative of her thinly-veiled contempt and self-assured place in the world. Thereafter, the play follows a fairly predictable Lady Chatterly course. A night of forbidden sexual lust after years of suppressed yearning, stoic heartbreak felt by the victim of betrayal, a ludicrously concocted plan to escape to New York on the next liner crossing and the inevitable return to things as they were prior to the venting and excitement. Secreted into matters, is the theft of considerable monies and the morbid decapitation of a canary!

Directed in the round by Dadiow Lin, the final sting in proceedings — the return to the status quo after a momentary flight of fancy — is tragically depicted with John seated on a stool beneath a lonely spotlight. He is polishing his master’s shoes as a result of a single telephone conversation which has transformed him from dynamic adventurer and ambitious master of his own destiny, back to grovelling and obsequious servant. Despite much achieved by that first Labour government, John’s stymied ambitions could serve as a metaphor for the country as a whole, which despite many changes and advances in the intervening years, continues to languish under a plutocratic yoke, reinforced by those above… and those below.

AFTER MISS JULIE continues at Park Theatre until the end of this month and has a sprightly running time of 70 minutes.