After Miss Julie Reviews
by Robert Diamond - October 22, 2009
The Roundabout Theater Company presents Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie, directed by Mark Brokaw. Sienna Miller (Factory Girl) and Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting) make their Broadway debuts in this provocative American premiere. Patrick Marber's new version of August Strindberg's drama about class and sex transposes Miss Julie to the English countryside on the eve of the Labour Party's landslidevictory in the summer of 1945.
David Rooney, Variety: "That's some handsome country kitchen Allen Moyer has designed for "After Miss Julie," with its chunky farm table, its sideboard stacked with Wedgewood and its oven range fringed by hanging copper pots and hissing steam. Pity there's so little cooking in Mark Brokaw's enervated production. Like Strindberg's play, Patrick Marber's blunt postwar-English update of the 1888 drama about class and sex requires an actress capable of negotiating wild swings and reversals. But Sienna Miller is out of her depth in the title role, making her dance of power and death an unaffecting tragedy."
Ben Brantley, The New York Times: While Mr. Miller and Ms. Miller are undeniably attractive people, their Julie and John don't seem terribly attractive to each other, a serious problem. There is one early moment of real erotic tension, when Julie extends her leg and asks John to kiss her shoe. Ms. Miller looks smug at first, then saucy, then distinctly uncomfortable and finally a bit frightened, as Julie wonders what she has let herself in for. Mr. Miller snatches at that pretty foot like a ravenous fish going after a hooked worm. Unfortunately, he - and we - are destined to stay hungry for the rest of the night."
Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "The Roundabout Theatre Company production, which opened Thursday at its American Airlines Theatre, demonstrates that Marber's updating and transplanting of the Scandinavian drama to post-World War II England works, for the most part, just fine."
Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal: "The action unfolds on the fateful night that the Brits voted Winston Churchill out of office and opted for the promise of socialism, which tells you just about everything you need to know about "After Miss Julie," whose real subject is contemporary class warfare in England. (It's not true that all contemporary English plays are about class warfare-it just seems that way.) Mr. Marber claims that "After Miss Julie" is "in its way, truer" than the original play on which it's based, but all he's done for "Miss Julie" is tart it up with politics and vulgarize it beyond recognition."
Jeff Labrecque, Entertainment Weekly: "Though the two characters have a well of self-loathing in common, the actors' chemistry is surprisingly stagnant. When the audience is finally willing to accept that John is merely the instrument for Julie's self-destruction, the play inconveniently asserts the lovers' long-suppressed pining for each other, which only underlines the performers' shortcomings. The two lovers trade verbal blows, while deciding whether to run away to New York City. 'The Americans are charmed by us,' says poor, bland John. 'They die for the accent.' I wish it were so. C"
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