Julie - Lyttleton

I don't think I've seen director Carrie Cracknell's work before, but on the strength of this I would rate her as slightly better than Norris.

Oh dear, so 'the look' was a bit too much this time..

Saw this tonight, and this is the context and purpose of this production.

Spoilers follow. . .

Strindberg thought women were generally useless, and uppity women, who aspired to equality with men, worse than useless.

Patrick Marber sneakily sidestepped the issue of Strindberg's misogyny by turning his version of Miss Julie into a rollicking sado-masochistic romp, of endless power-games. Natalie Dormer's whole wheelhouse is power games, so her version was a triumph, even better than the Donmar's, and better too than the film before that.

But this production is not a sexy sado-masochistic romp at all. It is a sad story of a mentally ill, infantilised female, dealing with the legacy of her mother's suicide, and her attempt to escape her psychological nightmares by glomming onto her father's chauffeur. It is Strindberg's sexist scenario filtered through Polly Stenham's recontextualising compassion for the idle rich and Carrie Cracknell's contempt for the patriarchy. It is Dolls House Part 2 - one hundred years later, a tale of a messed up drug-abusing Tara Palmer Tompkinson type, impulsively and desperately looking for relief from her psychological torments in all the wrong places.

This is entirely the story of Vanessa Kirby's Julie, with Kofi Abrefa's Jean merely along for the ride, literally.

Abreja's Jean's race is only an issue in the sense that Julie ignorantly assumes African families to be helpless and covered "in flies," when realistically, he is sophisticated and wily, and it is her own mind that is infested with flies.

That the real antagonist is Strindberg himself is evident from every rewritten reinterpretation of every line in the play. As Julie tells Jean: "Don't be so Victorian!" I found myself wishing for Strindberg to be an actual character in the play, lounging at the side of the stage, telling his "truths," Inheritance-style, so that the real drama of this piece could have human embodiment. If this had been done, this production could have reached 5 star heights.

As it is, Vanessa Kirby constructs a relatable, immediate, sometimes funny, often tragic, always powerful portrait of a woman infantilised by her upbringing to be unable to take care of herself.

I loved the way Kirby presented Julie as a witty presentable powerful figure, only to pull the rug out of every facet of Julie's personality brick by tragic brick. I've seen much of Kirby's stage work, from The Acid House to Streetcar, and her work here is up there with the best of it. Despite her supposedly unsympathetic character here, I was moved to tears.

4 stars from me.

PS: My view of the dance floor stage at the back was restricted by the big table in the middle of the front kitchen stage. The view from the front £15 seats is therefore somewhat restricted, as well as involving cricking of the neck, due to a high stage. Go further back, if you can afford it.

Maybe it was some of the previous comments about this had not been leading me to expect much from this production, but I was rather impressed with this: yes the dance scenes were a bit of a shambles, there wasn't much of a real chemistry between the two leads and the sex scene was slightly embarrassing rather than anything 'erotic' (up a ladder?) but I liked the way this built to this climax, all three actors were excellent and at 80 minutes, it didn't overstay its welcome.

Not one to go and see if you're fond of pet birds though...

Given the cost of the seats, previews should be considerably more than a 'rehearsal'; of course they are not the finished product but they are there to assess how the piece that was finished in rehearsals works in front of an audience, and tweak accordingly. The piece itself should be audience-ready. If major changes are happening in previews it's usually a bad sign.

Places like the NT, preview prices are only £5-£10 cheaper than the main run: rehearsals of shows in front of an audience, that may or may not yet be fit for purpose, should either be free, or charge a very low price for those attending.

But you can't fix the lack of chemistry in the central relationship in Previews. A major contributing factor in why this production fails.

You don’t know if this production has failed; you have only seen an early preview. I’ve seen productions change completely from first preview to opening night.

As a rule when booking previews to save a few pennies always try to get the night before opening on the assumption this is the run through of the finished item, can’t imagine major changes being introduced on the afternoon of the Press Night.

The biggest fail in previews for me was in Wild at Hampstead where the stage flipped in the final scene which failed during and we were given a description of the effect. Caught the play later in the run and when it worked it was a phenomenal piece of staging.

Back to Julie saw an intimate and intense production at the Jermyn last year, seeing this in a couple of weeks so will be interesting to compare as I thought that was near perfect in a way that can only be attained in a small Theatre.

For us. It failed for us. I wasn't saying it failed for everyone.

Vanessa's new fan girls c/o The Crown were loving it, as I noted in my review on page 1. Lots of laughter and gasps.

It just didn't work for us.

We'll see what the reviewers say tomorrow morning.

Has Vanessa Kirby really acquired fan girls from playing Princess Margaret??