It’s hard to view Strindberg’s Miss Julie—even Patrick Marber’s updated After Miss Julie—in light of today’s values.  The tragic weight of the play stems from the fact that after two people of a difference social class make love, their world is turned upside down.

Today, a quickie with someone below you in social status is not a shocker, but an exercise in branding—a step on the celebrity ladder of success.  In our world of sex tape “scandals” and Levi Johnson posing for Playgirl (one year after standing on the podium of the Republican National Convention next to Sarah Palin) how can we seriously buy the morning-after angst of Julie and her father’s valet?  Regardless of whether its set when Miss Julie was written (1888 Sweden) or updated in Marber’s version to 1945 England, the only dramatic question for modern audiences is: will she text her snooty friends and brag about shagging the help—or whether he’ll slip the news to the Post or TMZ in the hopes of a long career of snogging rich debutantes?

One might think the presence of Sienna Miller, a woman known to most people through the pages of tabloid gossip, would only exacerbate this inability to take Strindberg seriously.  Quite the contrary.  Miller is not a precision actress, but she has an instinctual theatricality.  One gets the sense that she’s not quite in control of her performances on stage (or on screen) yet she has a natural presence and an innate ability to get people to watch her.  At times, this allows for some real sparks on stage with her co-star Johnny Lee Miller.  The scene where Julie demands that John kiss her foot is about as sexually charged as anything you’ll see on Broadway this season.

Both Millers (no relation) look great, which helps give their self-loathing flirtations some extra spark.  At 95 minutes there are worse ways to spend an evening than in the presence of two attractive actors giving strong performances in an updated classic.  That there’s a few genuine moments of chemistry and frisson between them is a bonus.

Unfortunately, all of this heat ultimately dissipates in Marber’s and Strindberg’s tale which takes place in a large servant’s kitchen.   I don’t think it’s director Mark Brokaw’s fault, nor is it the actors’ fault either.  I’ve seen multiple Miss Julie’s adapted to give it relevance—and whether its set in the Deep South or South Africa with a black servant, or set here on the eve of Labour’s electoral defeat of Churchill and the Tories—the play just has lost its inherent ability to shock us.

My guess is that the only way for Miss Julie to exert its full grip on our emotions today is to fully re-create the social pressures of the world in which it was created—and somehow block out the audiences awareness of today.  Strindberg was a repressed romantic—and we live in an era that abhors romance or repression.  We live in the era of Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, girls who are modern incarnations of Miss Julie.  But, unlike Strindberg’s romantic, they didn’t kill themselves in shame after skanking up their wealthy family name—they simply cashed in.   This is the problem for those craving contemporary productions of Strindberg.  You don’t need to go to the theater to see a modern update of Miss Julie, the real After Miss Julie is on reality television every night of the week.

Image: Roundabout Theater Company’s After Miss Julie (left to right)Jonny Lee Miller, Sienna Miller. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Tags: After Miss Julie, broadway, criticism, Jonny Lee Miller, Sienna Miller, Theater