Julie - Lyttleton

Oh no do we think the Littleton will be the next dud theatre as Tramslations has been very well reviewed other stuff there’s looks promising . This and Absolute Hell have not been the best received, I am quite looking forward to the Lehman Triology, that’s cant go wrong can it?

A preview isn't a rehearsal.

A rehearsal is a rehearsal.


I've seen some fantastic previews - and they were made all the more exciting because you can tell the cast is enjoying the response from the audience (about which they might have been, until those first performances, unsure.) I like to be surprised by theatre and if I've read reviews/heard the hype, that sometimes takes away the enjoyment. I don't know any actors who consider previews rehearsals - they are very aware that they have a paying audience before them. But - I avoid booking early previews for technically complicated shows (having been burnt a couple of times) as they are more likely to have cancellations or stoppages. If you don't like previews, fine, but there are lots of reasons why people might choose to attend them. I'm more averse to going late in long runs when things can be very tired.

Divisive reviews (a number of fours, some twos) as opposed to the heavily divisive ones for ‘The Writer’ (some fives, some ones).

Billington's problem with this is that the tragedy doesn't emanate from "an inexorable dramatic force."

Well, I agree that Polly Stenham's version sidelines Julie's dramatic interplay with Jean, and instead focuses on humanising Julie, at the expense of that external dramatic force.

Without that dramatic interplay, Stenham is able to reveal a hidden truth about Julie, that Strindberg was too mean to concede, that she is a mentally ill character with absolutely noone to rely on.

The tragedy is milder, quieter, less dramatically diverting, but ultimately also, less programmatic, less constructed, more real, and desperately sad, in a way that's harder to dismiss than if Strindberg's "downfall of an uberbitch" dramatic motors remained in operation.

This version thus reaches parts the original did not reach, which makes consideration of the original, in light of this production, richer.

That said, it's bitterly funny what a bete noir the typically generous Michael Billington has become for Polly Stenham. Previously, he moaned about her focus on the wealthy, as if a person shouldn't write what they know, something she did marvellously in "No Quarter," in particular, with Tom Sturridge a Johnny Rooster Byron of the upper classes.

Then, she tried to branch out, and Billington moaned about her focus on the poor, which she failed to successfully write about in her scattershot misfiring class revolution drama, "Hotel."

Now Stenham is back to writing what she knows, about the miserable rich, and Billington is on Stenham's case again, this time for her audacity in not parroting Strindberg's original dramatic design. I, for one, am glad Stenham decided to do something original with the piece.

And I'm grateful too that this version has wiped from my mind the glossy emptiness of the Juliette Biniche Miss Julie at the Barbican.

How about an on stage recreation of the incident that occurred in the circle section that was reported in the press. That would definitely provide some “dramatic interplay”!

Yes I agree with this. Unfortunately I had seen an exemplary production of this play at Jermyn Street only last year and that made the flaws in this version all too obvious. This follows in a sad tradition of second-rate playwrights adapting a classic play and making it second-rate too - Anya Reiss' hatchet jobs on Chekhov are the template. There were so many subtleties and nuances in the original which were misunderstood or thrown away here - I will just mention one very small one as an example. 

The stolen wine - what's that about ?: Here we are presented with the fact that the chauffeur has stolen a bottle of wine worth hundreds of pounds (Chateau Latour) from his employer and offers as justification "we might as well drink well". We conclude simply that he's an untrustworthy thief (which is puzzling as it seems to go against his character and loyalty to his boss). At Jermyn Street it was just an ordinary bottle of wine which nevertheless the servants weren't allowed to drink. Jean pulls the cork and sniffs it, pours out a little, swirls it round, tastes it. He's a wine snob. It signals he has ideas above his current social station, he wants to be higher up the social scale and has adopted the mannerisms of his social betters, he is preparing himself for social advancement. As the play is driven by the difference in social class between Julie and Jean it is a telling point.

As mentioned by others there is no chemistry at all between the leads - I think this is because Stenham has no gift at all for dialogue, it is hard to have chemistry when you're having to spout meaningless platitudes to each other all the time. Actually Julie's dialogue was believable but Jean and Kristina (not much different) wasn't in the slightest bit. Just due to the personal experience of the writer I suppose and no ear for different speech patterns. 

Carrie Cracknell really needs to stop putting bits of distracting and embarrassing choreography into plays - the "party" here was just terrible, it looked like what it was, a bunch of highly-choreographed professional actors. 

The blender incident got big laughs, as did several other dramatic moments - due to poor writing I think helped along by a few Kirby fans who were laughing at a lot of her lines. 

Nice set by Tom Scutt. 

 

The Lehman Trilogy has had really mixed reviews wherever it has been staged - it was booed by some audiences in Italy. I think there is a risk here that people’s expectations are so far adrift from reality that there may be problems. It isn’t naturalistic, it has stream-of-consciousness monologues and narration instead of dialogue, it doesn’t really cover the fall of Lehmans in our era, stagings so far have been with white-box sets, it is very long, etc.

Was it written before 1970 ?

Have to say this is the reason i booked! I have a few of his over the years so i took the plunge with this. Didnt expect it to be a three hander though!!

Thanks for the heads up, will modify expectations, like lynette i booked for SRB so will similarly test my i'll watch anything he's in theory. 

HOW ABOUT BOTH?!