Review: After Miss Julie @ Roundhouse, Staveley (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Review: After Miss Julie @ Roundhouse, Staveley

10:10am Sunday 21st August 2011 in Leisure By Adrian Mullen, Arts correspondent

Patrick Marber’s version of Strindberg’s play is set on the night of Labour's landslide election victory in 1945 in the kitchen of a large country house.

It centres on three people - the flirtatious and unstable daughter of a Labour peer, Miss Julie, and two of the house servants, maid, Christine and chaffeur, Ben.

Kate Walford’s performance as Miss Julie was outstanding. Indeed, quite a revelation as I'd never seen her on stage before. She sort of sucked you into the foxy and hysterical young madam act of the first two scenes, where her character eventually seduces a willing John into bed.

She returns from their lustful liaison no longer a virgin, switching from the teasing temptress to deflated damsel, exposing Miss Julie’s vulnerability brilliantly, so much so, you can’t help feel a tinge of sympathy towards her.

Ben Dowman played an extremely convincing John, an employee with a swagger one minute - unsettlingly cold and mercenary the next.

In the role of Christine, John’s fiancee, was one of the most versatile performers on the Lakeland stage, Kate Vernon, who played it beautifully as she implacably tolerates her partner's sexual waywardness if not that of her social superior.

Marber’s script is sharp and comic at times with some great lines and under Chris Whiteside’s direction the production worked really well.

In fact, I'd like to see the cast perform it again on a bigger stage, which might give the characters more room to breathe and enhance the sexual chemistry.