Review: Miss Julie (August Strindberg), MTC production 2016

Today we went to see the second of our seven-play season subscription plays for the MTC's 2016 program - August Strindberg's 1888 naturalistic masterpiece, Miss Julie.

Seven-play seasons was a thing we used to do for the four or five years before the birth of our first daughter in 2003. Indeed, we saw the final such play, a production of Ovid's Metamorphoses from memory, when I was massively pregnant with her (there was some concern over whether a middle-of-aisle seat would hold my wide-berthed self, as I recollect).

Since the coming of the young 'uns, though, regular theatre-going has been both financially and logistically impractical, and although we have seen a couple of movies each year at the cinema, a few music concerts (Dead Can Dance, Fleet Foxes, Neil & Tim Finn, Mumford & Sons, kd lang) and I have been to a few writers' talks, over the past 13 years, we have not actually been to the theatre to see a play.

This year, we decided to break the drought by giving each other MTC season passes for Christmas. I won't lie, it's not cheap, although we did save some money by opting for Wednesday matinee performances (which suit us better anyway, as we don't need to organise babysitting). But, so far, it's been a great decision.

The first play we saw was Duncan Macmillan's Lungs, which we enjoyed, but I felt the ending was weak and the content didn't stay with me to any great extent. Today, however, we saw Strindberg's Miss Julie, and we were both blown away by it.

Strindberg's play picks up his own ideas of naturalism in a compelling, disturbing plot built around a somewhat inchoate meta-theme of social Darwinism. It revolves around only three characters: the unstable, high-handed, tragic and reckless daughter of a Count, Miss Julie; the thrusting, resentful, intelligent and often brutal valet, Jean; and the character who represents virtue, balance and ethical action, the much-put-upon kitchen servant, Kristine.

In keeping with the principles of naturalism, the plot deals with real, complicated human issues, in a simple setting (the action never really leaves the kitchen), and contains virtually no subplots or distractions - the play focuses with whip-crack sharpness on the developing relationship and dialogue between Miss Julie and Jean, and the underlying debate about class, gender and the future than drives it.

The MTC production sticks admirably to this simplicity, choosing a clean-lined set and minimal costume changes, and adhering to turn of the century aesthetics - a wise choice for this play, I feel, as playing around with visual modernisation would have been a distraction from the appreciation of the powerful contemporary resonances of Strindberg's ideas and dialogue. The film device, whereby the actors were screened live on a large overhead screen at the same time as they were performing the action in various stages, worked well, adding a touch of disorientation and hyperactivity to the mood of certain key scenes. (I did find that, for me, I had to focus on either the screen or the actors to avoid vertigo, but as I have wonky vision, I think this is unlikely to affect others the same way).

On the other hand, the script of the play has been considerably altered to make the language more contemporary (and not just with the liberal application of "fucks") and I think this works in a very potent way. Some of Strindberg's dialogue is very much of its time and place; the MTC script picks up the same concepts and presents them in plausible modern parlance, and I think this is why the play resonated so much with a 2016 audience.

Although Strindberg said himself that the play was primarily about the Darwinian struggle for dominance between the old, fading landed elites and the new, upcoming entrepeneurial classes, both my partner and I saw many other themes and resonances in it. (This, also, was probably intentional - one aspect of Strindberg's naturalism was his refusal to give characters simplistic, monotonal motivations, because human beings are complex and their actions are motivated by many, sometimes contradictory, experiences, drives, and desires).

Miss Julie, for example, is, particularly at the beginning of the play, clearly an arrogant, feckless, careless, wealthy woman who lacks any understanding of the lives and motivations of her servants, or any concern at all for their wellbeing. Robin McLeavy plays her with a hectic, fidgeting verve that suits the instability of the character perfectly.

Her commanding of Kristine to give up the Midsummer Night celebrations in order that Kristine can make a disgusting-smelling abortofacient for Miss Julie's dog is a good example of this; it does not occur to Miss Julie that her demand is unreasonable or unkind, or that, as Jean points out with some heat, she treats her dog more softly and gently than fellow human beings. Kristine's dignity is highlighted (not just at this point, but throughout) in sharp contrast to Miss Julie's flyaway folly and callousness.

Miss Julie's entire interaction with Jean across that long, hot night is an exercise in not just folly, but utter disregard for Jean's safety - the consequences for him of their eventual liaison are likely to be severe and permanent. Many times, while purporting to be honest, she slips into calling her servants and their ilk "scum" - a term she later tries to generalise to all people, without any real success. Her lack of understanding of the lives of the people that serve her persists, although she shows preliminary glimmerings of trying to comprehend. Even these first steps, though, are patronising; hearing Jean describe his childhood and life, she exclaims, "It must be so terrible to be poor!" Jean snaps back, "Not terrible, just hard". Moving from indifference to infantilising pity is not, as Jean sees immediately, a huge leap in thinking.

However, Miss Julie isn't as simple, or as simply detestable, as that, either. Strindberg's true modernity shows in his masterful display of intersectionality, long before such a concept was explicated. Miss Julie has class and wealth privilege in spades, but she is also at the mercy of some extremely toxic ideas about women and female behaviour, Jean tells her, with utter contempt, that her servants despise her for her flirtatious and familiar behaviour; they believe her to be a combination of a tease and a whore, and don't hesitate to say so, in blistering terms, once alcohol loosens their tongues.

Miss Julie's own impassioned rejection of her role as marital cattle, and the harrowing backstory of her free-thinking mother's subjugation, draws on this paradox, which is brought to its ultimate conclusion when Jean is busily constructing an elaborate fantasy about how the two of them can open a first-class hotel in Switzerland. "With what money?" Miss Julie asks. Jean replies that as he will bring his skills and expertise, she can provide the payroll. Miss Julie laughs, a bitter, incredulous sound, and tells him, "But don't you understand that I own nothing? Not this house, not the horses, not my own clothes, not the money ... It's all in my father's name. I'm as poor as you." It's at this moment that it's really brought to bear that Miss Julie's position is entirely dependent on, and mediated by, her father and his continuing goodwill. Cast out from his graces, she will indeed have no more than Jean - arguably, in fact, much less, as she has no resilience and no practical skills.

Jean is also a complex character, and played with brilliantly contained passion by Mark Leonard Winter. Like Miss Julie, he's neither entire villain nor entire hero, but speaks a lot of (class-based) truth to power while also engaging in a lot of (gender-based) obnoxiousness to both Miss Julie and Kristine. My husband said that Jean reminded him in a lot of ways of Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey - there's the same thrusting sense of deal-making, the same desire to be free of the yoke of the master combined with the same grudging, almost reflexive, respect for the old order. Like Thomas, Jean isn't really likeable, although his revelation of some of his wounds does mitigate this somewhat. It's my opinion that in the struggle between him and Miss Julie, he emerges ascendant not because he is the better or even the stronger person, but because he is ultimately more ruthless than she.

One of the biggest changes that the MTC production makes to Miss Julie is the ending, which gives Kristine an entirely new speech, alters (at least implicitly) the outcome, and underlines a point that the play has been making from the very first scene of cooking in the kitchen: that, in a very real sense, Kristine is the only hero of the piece. Kristine, unlike either Jean or Miss Julie, both knows who she is, and what she will accept from others.

Kristine is the character most altered from Strindberg's original work, in which she was little but a fairly limited, conventional, moralising servant. In the MTC's production, Kristine is the voice of ethical reason, calling continually to both Jean and Miss Julie to turn back from self- and other-destructive action and towards a mindset of respect. At the end of the day, she is the only one who need not ask forgiveness for the events of that hot, fretful night. Played with dignity and depth by Zahra Newman, Kristine emerges as the only character who knows the reasons for her decisions, and stands behind them without shame.

Overall, we found this a powerful, contemporary and flawlessly executed version of one of the great pieces of modernist naturalistic theatre. We're still talking about it, and I would not be surprised if Miss Julie visits my dreaming for many nights to come.

Reading Notes: The Secret Chord

My review of Geraldine Brooks' fictional biography of King David, The Secret Chord, is up at Global Comment today. I'd be interested in your thoughts!

Barilla Gluten Free

Disclosure: I was provided with the pictured sample pack for review purposes by Bite Communications on behalf of Barilla. No financial incentive was offered or accepted for this post, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

One of the more disappointing aspects of being a Coeliac is discovering how expensive gluten free food substitutes really are. These days, unlike when I was first diagnosed 7 years ago, gluten free analogues are generally quite tasty and pleasant - although I am yet to be fully on board with any gluten free bread, I must say - but even now, they are usually comfortably triple the price of regular products, and this can bite quite hard into a family budget.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in staple packaged foodstuffs like breakfast cereals and pasta. I have always bought cheap pasta for the kids (mercifully, none of them are Coeliac - yet) but have to supplement with pricey gluten free pasta for me, taking our cost effective spag bol nights up a notch in ways I don't like. But what can you do?

Well, you can wait until well established pasta makers start bringing out bulk gluten free lines, and then cross all your fingers and toes that they don't cook into mush and taste like rubbish. When I was offered this pack to test, I confess these were my worries, after several bad experiences with rice-based pasta in particular. I was also dreading that rice-y, slightly sour back taste that cheap (er) gluten free pasta often has, that even my rich home made bolognese sauce doesn't fully cover.

I'm happy to report that both these Barilla gluten free pastas pass the consistency and taste test with flying colours. When cooked according to the instructions on the pack, the pasta was nicely al dente, and provided no back taste at all, serving as a very suitable vehicle for the two sauces. (The Medierranean vegetable one was nice enough, but I preferred the tomato pesto - which I liked so much, in fact, that I have bought three jars for my pantry for can't-be-bothered-cooking nights).

The Barilla gluten free pastas are retailing in Woolworths supermarkets for around $3.69, which compares pretty damn favourably to other gluten free pasta available in the majors (I just did a quick brand comparison search and at today's prices, it is actually the cheapest one). This matters when you are a family on a budget, and it matters when you are a Coeliac who doesn't want to not be able to eat what your family eats.

Two thumbs up from me to Barilla for producing a tasty, quality pasta range for gluten intolerants that caters to people on a budget. I will certainly be buying this pasta in the future.

Reading Notes: Bud and Roo's Spectacular Adventures - The Beach

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of Bud and Roo's Spectacular Adventures: The Beach for review purposes by Bugle Boy Publishing. No financial incentive was offered or accepted for this post, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Jessica Valentine, the author of this sweet little picture book, contacted me on Twitter a while back and asked if I might be interested in reviewing Bud and Roo. I am usually up for a picture book offer, so I said sure, and soon enough an exciting international post envelope turned up for me from the UK.

The first thing to be said about this book is that it is very visually appealing. The illustrations look (according to my 7 year old, and I agree) like they have been drawn with textas, which creates a friendly, home-made feel to it all. The two dog main characters, Bud and Roo, are cute, although one small criticism I would make is that is is not clear which dog is which, a fact that bothered my 4 year old immensely. The oft-used "This is Bud. This is Roo" device doesn't appear, and to be honest, it's a classic for a reason - it lets kids quickly identify characters with their pictures, and this helps with story recognition later on.

In all other ways, though, the book is charming, simple and well crafted. I think it would best suit early readers or pre-readers - it's got a few words per page, a nice linear story with plenty of visual cues and repetitions, and a clear large font. It's not as quirky or complex as some of our favourite read-alouds, but for those very reasons, I've put it in the self-reading shelf along with the Spot the Dog and Scooby Doo early readers for 4 year old C to pick up. It'll suit her well as she starts to crack the code of written language.

This book retails in the UK for £5.99/$10.99 at Waterstones, WH Smith, Barnes & Noble, and independent booksellers. The ebook edition is available from Amazon.

Abigail the Story Bunny: Review and Giveaway

Stories are my 3 year old's grand obsession at the moment; it's hardly surprising, given how book-nerdy our entire family is. Apples, trees, and all that :-)

She loves to be read to, and she loves stories with a degree of interactivity. She's also been watching with growing irritation as a steady stream of parcels have arrived in the mail for 9 year old A (due to her birthday) and 7 year old E, who's been lucky enough to be sent several things recently for various purposes.

So when we were offered the opportunity to review Hallmark's interactive book toy, Abigail the Story Bunny, I said yes rather fast, as it featured a book, included a cuddly-looking bunny rabbit, and would come in a parcel! by the post! for C!

C's delight at receiving the parcel was only outstripped by her squeals of pleasure at the cute (and it is reeeeally cute) soft bunny, and her discovery that the storybook, Abigail and the Balance Beam, was about gymnastics, C's very own sport. The story is a pretty sweet one and certainly one C relates to; she's asked for it more than daily ever since we got it.

The basic concept of the Abigail package - of all the story buddy range, really - is that when you read the storybook that comes with the toy, the toy is programmed to contribute phrases and exclamations at particular narrative points. It mostly works like this, but, we have discovered to our amusement, not always.

This makes the story-reading experience rather excitingly random, as Abigail seems to struggle sometimes to understand Australian accents, and so remains silent when she is suppposed to speak, and chips in with observations unexpectedly at other times. My older girls have amused themselves to no end sitting in front of Abigail spouting random phrases to see which are similar enough to the key sentences in the book to provoke a response. ("Hey, it's an experiment in robotics!" protested the 9 year old when told her to knock it off :-)

This is not the first time we've had a talking toy, but I would say that it's probably the cutest and most useable such toy. C adores Abigail and her storybook and I think most preschoolers would too; it's just such good fun for the pre-reading crowd.

As well as being sent our own Abigail, we have been offered one to give away to a blog reader. If you're interested in winning one of these little cuties, just read the competition details below and give it a go!

Competition
If you'd like to win an Abigail, please leave a comment below telling me what your favourite preschool book is at the moment, and why. The most creative answer (as judged by me) will be the winner.

Terms:
1. Competition only open to Australian residents.
2. Entries close at 5pm on Thursday 23 August. No late entries will be accepted.
3. The judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
4. Winner will be announced on the blog on Friday 24 August. It is your responsibility to check back to see if you have won and email me at kathypllrd248 AT gmail.com with your postal address details.
5. If the winner has not contacted me within three (3) days of the announcement, an alternative winner will be selected and announced.

Good luck!

Disclosure: I was provided with one Abigail the Story Bunny pack for review purposes by Communicado on behalf of Hallmark. No financial incentive was offered or accepted for this post, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

THIS COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED.