STRINDBERG'S SHOCKING SEDUCTION 
                                              By Georgia Rowe
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater, music and dance 
                                                                 Week of April 10-17, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 91
          BERKELEY---"Miss Julie” has lost none of its power to shock and seduce.  August Strindberg’s 1888 chamber drama, which scandalized audiences when it was first performed, still yields one of the most riveting explorations of sexual politics and class warfare in contemporary theater.
            It certainly does in Mark Jackson’s luminous new production, which opened April 9 at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley.  Employing a translation by Helen Cooper, the director strips away the polite veneer that often constrains this tragic pas de deux between an aristocrat’s daughter and the servant who finds her irresistible.  Jackson, while never relinquishing Strindberg’s naturalism, lets the play’s heightened emotions rise and radiate throughout the Aurora’s intimate space to create an atmosphere of almost unbearable tension.         
            “Miss Julie” is a talky play. But Jackson, who has given the Bay Area a number of brilliantly staged productions (most recently, a scathing “Salome” for this company, and his own “The Death of Meyerhold” for the Shotgun Players a few years back), limns it with physicality.  When an intoxicated Julie commands the footman Jean to kiss her shoe, he seizes it with a vehemence that nearly pulls her to the floor (“I can see you’ve been to the theater,” she says.)  When the two finally make full body contact, it’s in a highly charged dance atop the kitchen table.  The morning after, which finds Julie and Jean sick with fear and recrimination, is just as explosive, and Jackson brings the final resolution – a desperate act that often takes place offstage – onstage with a jolt.  The director sustains the production’s feeling of potency even in its pregnant silences.
            The three-person cast is more than equal to the play’s demands.  In the title role, Lauren Grace projects the easy entitlement of privilege and a fierce drive for something more.  Grace’s Julie isn’t so much cruel as simply willful and unenlightened; in her performance, a lack of self-knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.  Mark Anderson Phillips gives Jean’s desire, rage and ambition a pointed, smoldering force.  Beth Deitchman is an aptly upright, wary Christine.  The production is well-served by Fumiko Bielefeldt’s handsome period costumes, Heather Basarab’s evocative lighting, and David A. Grave’s original music.  And Giulio Cesare Perrone’s painterly set is the picture of austerity – an ideal backdrop for the play’s dramatic intensity.
            “Miss Julie” continues at the Aurora Theatre, Berkeley,  through May 10.  Running time is 90 minutes, without intermission.  For tickets, call 510-843-4822 or go online. 
        ©Georgia Rowe 2009
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            Georgia Rowe is a Bay Area arts writer. Her work has appeared in Opera News, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Contra Costa Times in addition to artssf.com.     These critiques appearing several times weekly focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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