MISS JULIE: FREEDOM SUMMER: naturalism lost in a modernist setting

Stretched across the "Vancouver Playhouse":http://vancouverplayhouse.com stage is a polished example of 20th century naturalism: a civil rights era Mississippi kitchen, the kind of kitchen where African American servants used to prepare meals for white landowners. The detailed reproduction is fitting for an adaptation of August Strindberg’s *Miss Julie*, a play that is emblematic of the rise of 19th century naturalism. The original story took place in the kitchen of a country estate in Sweden. In Miss Julie: Freedom Summer, a new version by Stephen Sachs, the setting is transposed and the master-servant dynamics are grafted onto American black-white race politics.

The title character Miss Julie remains a conflicted, privileged rebel wrestling with an internalized hatred for her own gender (imposed by a wounded father figure) while trying to break free of herself by dangerously flaunting her sexuality with the servants, and in particular with the chauffeur John (Jean in the original). In this update, class division is further complicated by the colour bar, which transforms Strindberg’s uppity Jean, the male servant who dreams of going into business for himself, into John, a black man who dreams of escaping to Chicago and starting a jazz club.

As with Strindberg, Sachs tends to make his points emphatically — but even more so. While Sachs’ characters swing from emotional pole to pole, there is little room for more subterranean expressions of the surface power dynamics. This may be due to an inappropriate venue. Many of the landmark works of 19th century naturalism were championed by small theatre producers. Their power found its most potent expression in intimate settings. The large Vancouver Playhouse is one of a number of state theatres built in Canada in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. Their modernist architecture is both imposing and impersonal. My experience of watching shows in these theatres over the years is that they tend to suck the life out of the audience and the production. They lack ambiance. The exterior architecture of these buildings makes their interior remote from the urban surroundings. In the case of The Playhouse, the front street is a dead zone that only dimly flickers to life during the 30 minutes prior to show time. Even expansive windows that open from the lower and upper lobbies are of no help, as the theatre season runs from late September to around April, and its evening performances offer only a view of black night and perhaps a shadowy glimpse of the post office garage across the street — another monstrosity of modernist architecture.

The spectator, being crushed by the stifling geometry of the exterior and the lobby, finds herself further dispirited by the sleek and disinterested walls and ceiling of the auditorium, a room into which no beverages can be brought and a strict social code of hushed silence is generally observed by a well behaved audience. Any possibility of intimate contact with the performers is pretty much erased past the first eight rows or so. The actors, trying to fit the naturalistic playing style that the script and the set seem to ask for are forced into presentational body language that distorts the naturalistic notion of a fourth wall and necessitates vocal volume that crushes the ‘everyday language’ feel of the text. Despite three excellent performances, an unnatural distance is imposed on the spectator-performer relationship by the size of the space, which accommodates around 650 people.

Within the frame of the on-stage production, there’s little to find fault with. In addition to the fine performances, the lighting and naturalistic offstage sound-design support the slice-of-underbelly-life on offer. The script adaptation is another matter. With the election of the first African-American president ever, this seems a good time to reflect on race relations, in particular the history of slavery and the American civil rights movement. But while the transposition from 19th century Sweden to 20th century Mississippi works well, little light is shed on the subject. The script skips in a well-worn groove like a needle on a vinyl platter. Julie, while wonderfully embodied by Caroline Cave, is something of a ‘type’ — the neurotic Southern Belle falling from grace, familiar to us from a so many movies and plays. Cave fulfills expectations, but the rather polarized dialectic of Sachs’ script stops her short of finding any new angles.

There was one very startling moment in the production, when John (Kevin Hanchard) and Christine (Raven Dauda), the two black servants, transform from opinionated three-dimensional human beings to subservient cutouts that conform to stereotyped expectations. This abrupt change, occurring at the arrival of Miss Julie, emphasizes the two-world nature of the black experience in the USA. But otherwise, the adaptation, which is pedantically critical of the subjugation of African Americans, seems to re-inscribe the master-slave relationship of the past. Obviously the title is meant to be ironic, but presenting the ugly facts of racism with such lack of complexity feels like an unnecessary step backward. I’m not suggesting we try to erase the past, but a story in which an African American fails to escape an internalized slave mentality seems regressive. In addition, Miss Julie’s suicide fails to offer revelation because it is always hard to make believable, especially in this adaptation. The character, which is so clearly written from the outside, seems to be pushed to suicide not so much by an internal self loathing, but by the playwright’s desire to make a melodramatic statement. And John’s pathetic, regressive, and Pavlovian submission to his master’s voice, is ugly and doesn’t shed any new light on the issue.

In a way, Christine is the most complex character in this adaptation: on the one hand she’s getting herself educated about her rights (and in effect joining the resistance); on the other hand she’s a good Christian and a traditionalist when it comes to male-female conjugal relations. She’s the only character who seems to be honestly trying to fight her way out of her situation, and not just play-acting at it. Like the other characters she dreams of something different, but she’s also a pragmatist, encouraging John to get a job as a janitor so he can support her and any children they might have.

A final script note: for anyone familiar with the structure of Strindberg’s original, there are really no surprises here. I found the whole experience rather dispiriting. I felt a bit like, “so where do we go from here?” The play offers only a dead end.

Naturalism in large theatres usually feels forced to me. In the Playhouse it looks as dead as ever. Looking around at the tired patrons, mostly in their 50s and 60s, I got the sense of an obligation fulfilled: we did our duty as supporters of diversity in theatre, and as good liberals concerned with racism and oppression. I’d like to hand it to the Playhouse for finally offering more than a token nod to ethnic diversity, but even updated to the 1960s Miss Julie felt like a museum piece — a little dioramic display of black history. This particular artifact seems designed to make everyone, black and white, feel hopeless, without offering the great wallowing catharsis of good dramatic hopelessness. The Playhouse keeps getting the diversity issue wrong. The last “race” play we had was the Syringa Tree, a story about South Africa — told from the perspective of a white woman. I can’t help wondering how different this adaptation of Miss Julie would have been if an African-American had written it. And when I think of all the great plays written by Americans and Canadians of African descent, I can’t help wondering when the Playhouse is going to let one of them tell their own story.

_Miss Julie: Freedom Summer ran at the Playhouse from Jan 10-31. Directed by Stephen Sachs .Choreography by Max Reimer. A co-production with The Canadian Stage Company. Cast: Caroline Cave as Miss Julie, Raven Dauda as Christine, Kevin Hanchard as John. Set & Costume Design: Pam Johnson. Lighting Design: Alan Brodie. Sound Design: David B. Marling. Stage Manager: Bill Jamieson. Assistant S.M.: Samara Van Nostrand_