Mies Julie closed late last month at Victory Garden and left us scratching our heads a bit as we thought about what we saw. If you came to the play blind and unfamiliar with August Strindberg’s original work, you took everything you saw and heard on face value because you didn’t know what this adaptation was referencing. Strindberg’s Miss Julie is a 19th century one act play about the brief and tragic love affair between two people across the divide of class. The Victory Garden Mies Julie written by playwright Yaël Farber and directed by Dexter Bullard, ups the ante by adding the barrier of race to that of class.
With the action placed in South Africa rather than Strindberg’s Sweden, set designer Kurtis Boetcher’s brought a realistic look and feel of a country known for its heat and expansive vistas. And he’s done this despite the fact that all we see throughout the play is a kitchen. With just colors and textures and insinuations within the dialog, a sense of exotic unfamiliarity took a firm hold.
If you do a little homework to find out about the original Miss Julie, you can understand the thought of reinterpreting it within the race context. Acclaimed for her ability to treat complex and controversial themes, Farber is an able candidate to tackle the subject. Her redo does a beautiful job of helping to understand the unique tensions between black South Africans and the Boer minority that once controlled the country.
The kitchen and home containing it belong to a prominent landowner we never see and his impetuous and demanding daughter Mies Julie; impressively performed by Heather Chrisler. It is cleaned and maintained by Christine (Celeste Williams), a native African woman. Her son John (Jalen Gilbert) joins her there where he’s fulfilling one of his many jobs as the landowner’s de facto manservant. We meet him while he’s cleaning boots. When Mies Julie sweeps in, she wears her status like an impenetrable cloak and brings with her a palpable tension and unease.
The vast chasm between the ruler and the ruled makes Mies Julie’s seduction of John all the more disturbing. And by using her institutionalized power over him to insure his submission, the play’s trajectory resembles a meteor screeching menacingly through the darkness. There’s also something missing; a nugget of essential truth that impedes the absolute acceptance of the main characters.
No such obstacles stood in the way of understanding how much the land means to both the indigenous black population and to those who colonized it. Christine repeatedly reminds her son of the generations of ancestors buried just beneath the foundation of the kitchen they’re standing in and how time will eventually return the land to those with a natural right to it. Despite the means by which they ceased the land, the white population’s stake in keeping it goes back as far as the late 1700’s when the Dutch initially arrived in the country. Even post-apartheid, land rights continue to play a volatile and contentious role in the dynamics of South Africa.
Perhaps there was just too much happening in one act to engender meaningful plausibility. Or maybe once the play began to move in earnest and then zoom toward an inevitable precipice, the sense of helplessness that overcomes the two main characters, on reflection, seemed rushed.
South African accents may not be the easiest to master. Any accent can be hazardous if it infringes too much on comprehension as it sometimes did during this performance. How much greater clarity would have helped bolster the cohesiveness of the storyline will remain an unknown.
Character portrayals were wonderful. Celeste Williams as Christine, a mother watching her son jeopardize both his and her security for an empty dream was Fort Knox solid. Heather Chrisler as Mies Julie knew how pull out all the stops to deliver riveting from the gut acting. And Jalen Gilbert as John was a pleasure to watch as he adroitly flipped from hot to cold with startling alacrity.
Giving us a living picture of South Africa is what Mies Julie did best. That in itself made for an enlightening journey.
Mies Julie
Victory Garden Theater
2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
Show Close Date: 6/24/18