I know my place, says Christine (Pauline Hutton), the cook in Patrick Marber’s version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie. The shattering of social place, status and class hierarchies is central to this psychodrama, given ferocious bite in Marber’s dialogue. But a wider sense of place is missing from his new version for Belfast company Prime Cut. Here the setting is moved to Northern Ireland, and the action is transposed from the Labour election victory of 1945 to the VE Day celebrations a few months earlier.
John (Ciaran McMenamin) has grown up on the Big House estate in County Fermanagh, and recently returned to his position as chauffeur, demobbed from the army. All his life he has watched his master’s daughter, Julie (Lisa Dwyer Hogg), following her with his eyes, and spying on her when she thought she was alone. He calls it love, but later wonders whether it was envy. Proud, ambitious for advancement, he is caught between two worlds, and can only reclaim dignity by ordering Christine around. In a furious gesture, McMenamin spits on his master’s shoes as he polishes them. Later he vents his frustration on Julie in a violently misogynous verbal attack.
With its windows along two walls, designer Sarah Bacon’s meticulously detailed kitchen emphasises an atmosphere of surveillance. At any moment, John and Christine could be watched from outside, or summoned by the master’s omnipresent bell. Or they might be joined, on a whim, by Julie, in search of diversion on a langourous summer’s night.
Dwyer Hogg is a bird-like Julie, flitting around the scullery table, high pitched and highly strung. Shimmering in a figure-hugging dress, she seems delicate rather than commanding, despite her cut-glass accent. Having recently broken up with an army officer, she is vulnerable, gasping for a drink and seeking admiration. Partly owing to the slow pacing of the seduction scene, the flirtation between her and John lacks a dangerous edge. Sexually frank though Marber’s script is, this couple do not generate the required electricity; it is as if they are inhibited by the presence of an audience.
The strength of Emma Jordan’s production is its almost Pinteresque intimation of domestic space as territory to be negotiated. Quietly, Christine reclaims ownership of it, as John and Julie’s spiral becomes increasingly destructive. Yet what is missing is a Northern Irish context. Without any reference to the historical, political and religious divides outside the gates, the transposed setting seems perfunctory, suggesting either the need for much further reworking of the text, or that he should have done none at all.
- At Project Arts Centre, Dublin, until 19 March. Box office: (353) 1 881 9613. Then touring until 9 April.
