Dance of Death Miss Julie Review Classsic Stage Company
(fifty to r) Elise Kibler, Patrice Johnson Chevannes and James Udom in 'Mies Julie.'
(Photo: Joan Marcus)
By Samuel 50. Leiter
Of the 3 non-English-linguistic communication playwrights usually recognized as the pillars of modern theatre—Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg—it's safe to say the latter is the least widely produced. When Baronial Strindberg gets a rare New York production, more likely than not information technology's Miss Julie (1888), which is part of the fair-to-middling ii-play Strindberg repertory now at the Classic Stage Company. At that place, South African Yaël Farber's adaptation, retitled Mies Julie, is rotating with Irish playwright Colin McPherson's translation of The Dance of Expiry (written 1900; first staged 1905).
Presented under the inaccurate title of Two 19th-Century Plays by Baronial Strindberg in Repertory, the productions' artistic components share but the CSC's space and the contributions of fix designer David Arsenault, lighting designer Stacey Derosier, sound designer Quentin Chiappetta, and with fight and intimacy direction shared by Alicia Rodis and Claire Warden.
Intimacy direction/choreography is an emerging field, on both stage and screen, as a way to create a prophylactic and chatty environment for actors and the artistic team. While that is indeed important, information technology doesn't necessarily hateful — as represented by the artificiality of the results here, where the surrounding audience is in such close proximity — that it leads to something more than realistic or erotic than what the director may have solely accomplished.
The Trip the light fantastic of Death
Broadway first saw Dance of Death in 1948 (an accommodation called The Terminal Trip the light fantastic toe), starring Oscar Homolka and Jessie Royce Landis as Strindberg's feuding spouses, Edgar and Alice, probable stimuli for Albee'due south George and Martha. Subsequent Broadway revivals accept cast Rip Torn and Viveca Lindfors (1970), Robert Shaw and Zoe Caldwell (1973), and Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren (2001). An Off-Broadway staging (2013) employed Donald Davis and Laila Robbins.
Similar the last named, the best revivals mix one-act with the cruelty. Laughs, though, are exceptional in director Victoria Clark'south monotonous CSC revival, with its charisma-challenged cast headed by Richard Topol and Cassie Beck, supported by Christopher Innvar every bit Alice's cousin, Kurt. Even with McPherson's adaptation, no ane makes The Dance of Decease seem other than a tedious ballet of marital hell.
Cassie Brook and Richard Topol in 'Trip the light fantastic of Death.' (Photo: Joan Marcus)
In Strindberg's acerbic tale of conjugal dysfunction, Edgar is the commanding officer of an island fortress (once a prison). The considerably younger Alice, a 1-time actress, and he are before long to be observing their silverish anniversary. Simply it's no reason for them to telephone call a armistice on verbally and physically slapping each other around.
Kurt, a quarantine officeholder visiting afterward a long absence, often watches their combat and is presently responsible for waking Alice'south sleeping hormones. Meanwhile, the captain endures a series of fits and strokes, conflicts arise regarding Kurt'due south children, and Kurt flees. Alice and Edgar proceed wallowing in their trough of love and detest.
Clark's in-the-round direction occasionally has the characters dancing, suggesting that marriage is itself a dance of death as its participants gradually wring the life out of i another. Her directorial touches include piano-less pianoforte playing and a touch on of dominatrix shtick.
Topol and Beck lack the appeal to brand their tiffs annihilation other than exponentially irritating. His shuffling movements and sloppy appearance bely Edgar'south job title, while his growling vocalism and scenery chewing propose an audience for Marat/Sade. Innvar, like the man he plays, does the all-time he can under the circumstances.
Mies Julie
If Strindberg's name weren't attached to it, many, like the sleepers visible throughout the house, would pay this play scant attention. A more successful, if still imperfect, picture of the battle of the sexes is bachelor in Farber's Mies Julie, which walks off with the honors.
Strindberg's original, while often given faithful productions, is just every bit likely to exist adapted in radical ways that make it more a new play than a revival. (Josh Logan'south 1950 version of The Ruddy Orchard, The Wisteria Trees, moved the locale to the Deep Southward.) In 2014, there were ii New York versions of Miss Julie, Bastards of Strindberg, four ane-acts with different takes, and Fume, a sizzling adaptation set at a contemporary BDSM party.
The year before, Mies Julie played at St. Ann'south Warehouse and is now revived with a new cast under Shariffa Ali's direction. Farber moves the situation to a farm in the desolate Eastern Greatcoat Karoo, South Africa, where Freedom Day, 2012, is being historic (offstage) by black squatters aroused at the white landowners. While many of Strindberg'southward plot points are retained, there are nearly plenty differences to make this more than an original than an adaptation.
(l to r)James Udom, Elise Kibler and Patrice Johnson Chevannes in 'Mies Julie.' (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Equally a storm threatens, we meet Julie (Elise Kibler, sensual in a "Baby Doll" style), the restless, neurotic daughter of the racist, Afrikaans farm owner, whose fiancé recently concluded their engagement. She's hot for John (James Udom, all manlike sensitivity), the Xhosa subcontract worker she tries to boss and somewhen seduces. The pious housekeeper, Christine (Patrice Johnson Chevannes, maternal but sharp-tongued)—John's fiancée in Strindberg (who calls him Jean)—has been reimagined equally John's mother, who also raised Julie. Regrettably, the intense performances of these actors (especially Udom) are marred by the occasional unintelligibility of their accents.
There's also Ukhokho, an ancestral figure, played past 90-year old Vinie Burrows, watching from the sidelines and sometimes globe-trotting ghost-like across the stage like a cautionary presence. This nod to local history (the farmhouse was built over Xhoso graves) was more powerfully evoked (with two women) in the superior 2013 production, whose choreographic excellence is now nowhere to exist found.
Performed in-the-circular, likeThe Dance of Decease, but with an overhead fan circling through the haze in a higher place a dingy kitchen,Mies Julieevokes the sultry world of a Tennessee Williams play, with sweat, booze, boredom, and repression colliding in a cocktail of animalism. Julie makes her first entrance wearing a revealing red sundress, then lies face upwards on the table, her thighs quivering with want as John watches from across the room. She then exits, but just before she reappears, Christine talks about Julie's dog equally a bitch in heat, an prototype impossible to forget as nosotros watch Kibler's anxious pacing.
Elise Kibler and James Udom in 'Mies Julie.' (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Farber's 75-infinitesimal play, reminiscent of 2009'due south Miss Julie: Freedom Summer, set on a Mississippi plantation in 1964, adds to Strindberg's focus on male person-female power dynamics and class warfare, tensions tied to postal service-apartheid racial and historical land ownership issues. All of it is expressed through the medium of John and Julie's passion, leading to Julie's ghastly onstage demise (offstage in Strindberg).
Neither of these revivals is a must see, but if you must see i, I suggest Mies Julie.
Two Nineteenth-Century Plays by August Strindberg in Repertory:
The Dance of Death and Mies Julie
Classic Phase Company
136 E. thirteenth St., NYC
Through March 10
Samuel 50. Leiter is Distinguished Professor Emeritus (Theater) of Brooklyn College and the Graduate Heart, CUNY. Sam, a Drama Desk voter, has written and/or edited 27 books on Japanese theater, New York theatre, Shakespeare, and the slap-up stage directors. For more of his reviews, visit Theatre's Leiter Side,Theater Pizzazz, andTheater Life.
Struggling with Strindberg: 'The Trip the light fantastic toe of Death' and 'Mies Julie' was last modified: February 11th, 2019 by
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Source: https://thebroadwayblog.com/august-strindberg-classic-stage-company-reviews/
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