Although Strindberg's Miss Julie is recognised as an important moment in the development of 'naturalism' in theatre, Dominic Hill's direction of Zinnie Harris' updating owes as much to Brecht and classical models of tragedy. The sparse, neutral set and the broad characterisations of the central couple, servant John and the daughter of the master Julie firmly define the story as the tragic destruction of a woman, drawing out both the proto-feminism of Strindberg's source script and the oppressive society that defines individuals less by potential or personality than by their status.
The heart of the plot lies in the seduction of Miss Julie by the servant, John: although Louise Brearley plays Julie with an initial haughtiness, Harris' John is clearly in command, his changes of mood less capricious than the calculated attacks of a bully intent on getting his way. There is a palpable lack of sexual frisson between this John and Julie: Keith Fleming performs John with a consistent brutality, rarely swaggering, never sensual. That Julie can be seduced by a braggart and a bully - his confession of love for her is unconvincing but calculated to appeal to her romantic dreams - is alienating and uncomfortable.
It is here that Hill's Brechtian influence is most evident. In his attempt to make theatre that has a socialist
message, and can promote political change, Brecht developed the idea of an audience that is more intellectual than emotionally engaged. By encouraging a distance between the performance and the audience, Brecht hoped to exposed the structures beneath the action, and allow the audience to observe how the events could have played out differently. With Fleming's brutish performance, it becomes difficult to understand why Miss Julie would be erotically fascinated by the servant: his kisses are rough, not in any animalistic sexual manner, but like an attack. When he suddenly drops her, after having had her, it is clear that he is interested in her as a means to satisfy his own ends.
Without the sexual chemistry that has made Miss Julie a morally ambiguous study of sexual and social power-plays, it is clear that Brearley's Miss Julie is not seeing the same John as the audience. Her clumsy flirtations in the early scenes suggest less maturity than she claims: the scripts descriptions of her father's savagery and Julie's treatment of her fiance imply that she is familiar with violence and is attracted by her seducer's thuggishness. From his scenes with his fiancee Christine (Jessica Hardwick), John is revealed immediately as arrogant and chauvinistic. Even before John confesses his love of Miss Julie - which he describes as a virus in a bluff, antagonistic complaint - it is clear that he is a bully.
Hill's production exposes Miss Julie's mistake: and it is here that the plot takes on a tragic tone. Miss Julie does follow some of Aristotle's 'guidelines' for tragedy: there is a unity of location, time and plot, and there are three actors, just as in the golden age of Athenian drama. Miss Julie's story - like a tragic heroine, she is high-born - follows the predictable path towards her doom. Her failure to recognise John for what he is become her 'tragic flaw' (
hamartia).
By presenting Julie as naive, and John as vicious, Hill's production both highlights the tragic line of the plot and alienates the audience from an easy emotional engagement with either character. It's a remarkable trick: Brecht regarded his approach as an antidote to the aristocratic bias of
Aristotelian tragic theory. Naturalism - a theatrical movement led by Ibsen and
Strindberg (which concidently overlapped with their mutual interest in the role of women in society) - is less of a bridge between the two modes than a specific response to the rise of science in the nineteenth century, rejecting supernatural interventions (like the gods of Greek tragedy of Hamlet's father's ghost) and following Darwin's ideas about evolution (exposing human personality as a product of natural selection).
This naturalism is a far cry from the 'gritty realism' of contemporary drama, and Harris' adaptation builds on the psychological depth of Strindberg's characterisation to explore the specific dilemma of a woman, like Miss Julie, who has been encouraged to act like a man (by her mother) and beaten (by her father). By delineating this characterisation so precisely, Harris reveals Strindberg's talent for expressing the motivations of his characters and allows the production to create the emotional distance between audience and performers without forcing the actors to slip into caricatures.
By updating the play into 1920s Scotland, during a strike, and recasting the Lord as a mill-owner determined to break a strike, Harris doesn't so much lend a contemporary relevance as locate the sexual battle within a wider set of social changes. John, like many bullies, is cowed by the master's presence - suggesting that his attitude towards women is based in insecurity - and Christine voices a conservative and religious faith in the rightness of hierarchy. Off-stage, the striking mill-workers celebrate (and are defeated): a reminder that the upsetting of the sexual hierarchy expressing in the tryst reflects wider conflicts.
It also adds to the claustrophobia of the final scenes, when Miss Julie realises that she cannot escape. Strikes
are preventing travel, and the father's guards are poised to prevent her leaving the estate. Both the old and new social orders are restraining Miss Julie: that John talks proudly of the workers' resistance (while failing to actively support them) is a reminder that supposedly radical political change may not address the oppression of women.
True to the tragic influences, the unfolding of the plot is pessimistic: only through death can Miss Julie escape. But Fleming's John provokes her suicide, turning back into the lowly servant on the return of his Lordship and using the threat of his wrath to terrify Julie. The lack of compassion from both Christine and John isolates Julie - Christine's sudden aggression is an explosion of emotion from beneath the placid acceptance she displays in the early scenes. It is only in the final moments that the mesh of Brecht, naturalism and tragedy is betrayed: the suicide is presented as a sudden black-out, Brearley holding the knife to her throat in a melodramatic pose.
The final is an act of bad faith in Hill's sophisticated direction: the subtle interaction between the subtext of the seduction and the performances is undermined by crass emotionalism. Fleming's John is reduced to a melodramatic villain, and Julie is stripped of her dignity as a tragic heroine. Throughout the play, there are shocks - the rough kisses, the sudden reversal of John's enthusiasm when he realised that he can't use Julie to fulfil his fantasy of being a businessman. Yet the last image is contrived to surprise, to present horror rather than fear and pity (as in Aristotle's strictures) or intellectual analysis (per Brecht).
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