While August Strindberg’s Miss Julie is classically thought of as a naturalistic drama, in the hands of the Barbican Theatre’s current production it is anything but.
Presented on the venue’s huge stage, Laurent P Berger’s stylish-to-the-extreme set comprises two glass panelled rooms. The furthest from the stage houses not only a group of partygoers, dancing provocatively amongst a cluster of empty champagne bottles, but a forest of white painted tree trunks. The room where the action takes place is a similarly white and similarly stylish, minimalist kitchen with a decadent shrunken lounge that begs for debauchery.
Binoche stars as the title aristocrat who, following a night of dancing with the servants at a Midsummer ball, enters into a dangerous power game with servant Jean, a man who while not matched with the manipulative and spoilt lady of the house in status, more than matches her in the manipulation stakes.
Set over the course of one night, flippant actions and misplaced desires leads Julie to her downfall and an impossible dilemma. Director Frédéric Fisbach certainly captures this increasingly nightmarish situation, giving it a sinister and surreal edge. While some of the power themes may be lost with the kitchen – conventionally a symbol of Julie entering a world beneath her – altogether too luxurious to ever be thought of as lowly, it is an original take on the classic although its avant garde, slowly paced style may not to be to everyone’s tastes.
Binoche commands the stage as the woman scorned, her childish petulance giving way to a fear that the actress handles with suitably wide-eyed confusion. From her erotically charged first scenes which see her seducing all in a gold sequinned dress falling suggestively off her shoulders, she transforms both physically and emotionally to become the downtrodden puppet in Jean’s cruel game.
As the rogue in question, Nicolas Bouchaud is utterly believable, torturously caught in the habit of serving those more powerful than him, but desperately enjoying his new found control.
The problem is that both characters are utterly unlikable, each equally as repugnant as the other and utterly unrelatable with their extreme hubris. For this reason, Bénédicte Cerutti as Jean’s abandoned, put upon lover Kristin often steals the show, her short scenes punctuating the production with likability.
Set to a score of The Buzzcocks and Blondie on a set that looks like it could win the Turner Prize, with men in rabbit masks or dressed as white pine trees popping up for surreal scene changes, this is in no way a conventional production, but is certainly full of surprises and an undeniable visual feast.