MISS JULIE: FREEDOM SUMMER adapted by Stephen Sachs from the play by August Strindberg (Canadian Stage). At the Bluma Appel (27 Front East). To March 7. $20-$90. 416-368-3110. See Continuing. Rating: NNNN
August Strindberg’s once controversial Miss Julie can seem dated and misogynist to a modern crowd. None of those adjectives applies to Stephen Sachs’s adaptation, which smoulders with relevance and passion.
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In Miss Julie: Freedom Summer, Sachs keeps the basic plot about sex, power and entrapment. But he’s replaced the bitter cold of Strindberg’s Scandinavia with the languid humidity of the American South. In so doing, he’s raised the stakes a lot.
On a sweltering 4th of July in 1964 Mississippi, fireworks that sound ominously like guns are exploding outside, and the nation’s abuzz with the news of three missing civil rights workers. Meanwhile, Julie (Caroline Cave), the daughter of a prominent white lawyer, drunkenly seduces her father’s chauffeur, John (Kevin Hanchard), much to the disapproval and fear of the estate’s maid and John’s girlfriend, Christine (Raven Dauda).
The historical backdrop adds texture, and period songs on the radio lend a naturalistic feel. But what’s most thrilling is that Julie’s erratic, neurotic behaviour fits in well with the Southern milieu. A descendent of Faulkner and Williams, this Julie comes from a long line of demented literary Dixie chicks. Sachs’s occasionally overwrought, flowery language suits the characters and the period like a mint julip.
Especially in the context of last month’s historic events, the race issues hit home powerfully. Sachs layers the script with the idea that slavery exists in various aspects of life, and the power struggle between Julie and John is understood as an outgrowth of troubled times. Setting determines character.
It takes a while for the ear to adjust to the actors’ drawls, and some words are lost in the big Bluma space. Cave’s high-strung Julie sometimes seems to be imitating Bette Davis’s Jezebel, but the quivering timbre of her voice successfully suggests instability.
As a director, Sachs knows how to keep the tension high yet also balance it with humour, especially from Dauda’s carefully thought-out Christine.
It’s tough to pull off a script as poetic and charged as this, but the actors succeed. When Cave’s Julie compares her dreams to John’s and says, “You fly, I fall,” it encapsulates their differences in a few words.
This production flies.
glenns@nowtoronto.com
