MIes Julie at the Boston ArtsEmerson: Passion, Violence and Love in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Photo by Roger Bosch. Bongile Mantsai as John and Hilda Cronje as Mies Julie

Mies Julie, director and playwright Yaël Farber’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, is a striking piece of theatre, which retains the basic plot, principal characters, and many of the ideas of the original, while transposing it to a very different world. Strindberg’s nineteenth-century Miss Julie takes place on a Swedish estate on Midsummer Eve, a time of unbridled fun, one which creates a space for the brief affair between Julie and the valet Jean.

 

Farber’s play occurs on a farm in South Africa’s Karoo region on the evening of Freedom Day 2012, eighteen years after the election of Nelson Mandela. Surprisingly, at least for a US audience, the holiday is a time of bitterness, not joy. For Farber, there is nothing to be celebrated. In Mies Julie, the farm symbolizes South Africa’s failure to achieve its goal of equality. The Whites retain wealth, power, and land; the Blacks remain deprived and dependent on White people’s goodwill. Hatred and fear seem to underlie their relationships with each other. But nothing is quite as simple as that.

As in Strindberg’s play, the two good-looking young people – here John and Julie – are drawn to each other sexually despite their differing status. Julie (Hilda Cronje) takes the initiative, showing off her body to the excited, but fearful John (Bongile Mantsai) who turns his eyes away from forbidden fruit. She struts, lounges on the table seductively, and leaps about the stage to a throbbing rhythm. Mantsai uses his body like the dancer he is. He is full of athletic vigor, which, at times, he manifests with stylized movement. The language of the body is used to full advantage in Farber’s direction.

This certainly applies to the torrid, raw, and believable sex scenes between the two. What Strindberg had to hide offstage is now permissible, but still able to shock, in today’s theatre. Although Farber’s script tells the story clearly and sharply, the visual and aural metaphors take us into a dreamlike atmosphere. The smoke that infiltrates the kitchen set intensifies the threat, passion, and mystery that haunt this drought-ridden farm. In much the same way, Daniel Pencer and Matthew Pencer’s eerie high-tech music – sometimes throbbing, sometimes chanting, and sometimes an electric hum – accompanies the action throughout.

References to Miss Julie abound, even in the props. Since they have less relevance in Farber’s play, it appears that she is emphasizing the connection between the two works. A birdcage hangs from the ceiling, the Master’s leather boots stand on the floor in front of the bench where John sits to polish them though he is a farm laborer, not a house servant like Strindberg’s Jean. The social distance between Farber’s lovers is much greater, involving race and an ugly history. Nonetheless, once the barriers between them have been loosened, John uses the lies Strindberg invented to win Mies Julie’s love.

Both dramatists wanted to jolt their audiences and present topical issues in contemporary fashion. Strindberg was interested in class and gender differences, repelled by the fin de siècle “emancipated woman,” and fascinated by psychology, particularly hysteria and hypnosis, all of which are embedded into his Miss Julie. Farber’s subtitle, “Restitutions of Body and Soil,” explicates her principal theme, the need for social justice in South Africa.

Two characters, Christine (Thoko Ntishinga) and the ancestor (Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa), are most representative of South Africa’s history. In this version, Christine is Mies Julie’s former nursemaid and John’s mother, rather than his fiancée, a Strindbergian plot device. Despite her love for her son and affection for Julie, Christine’s greatest loyalty is to her forebears, buried under the blood red tiles of the kitchen floor, whom she repeatedly attempts to dig up and set free. Unlike the younger generation, Christine is resigned to the life she has, aided by her attachment to Christianity. Julie and John crave change but are too enmeshed in their love-hate relationship to leave the bondage of their past behind.

Christine is the link between past and present, the only one capable of seeing the ancient ancestor, the ghostlike Ukhokho – Farber’s creation – who remains mostly on the periphery of the setting watching, intermittently chanting, and playing traditional instruments. A large woman, dressed in white flowing robes, her head wrapped in a scarf, she bears a strong resemblance to Christine, accentuated by their similar costumes and the farm implements they carry. In one of the play’s strangest moments, the two women stand beside the table on which Julie and John sleep after making love, staring down at them. Are they protectors or menaces? As Christine leaves, she tips the birdcage roughly; the ancestor places the boots down center stage. These actions, which bring to an end part one, seem to suggest the horrific ending of the play or are they a spell cast by the elders?

For indeed, the tenderness, which existed between John and Julie fleetingly, turns to anger, contempt, and loathing. They find themselves in a duel, John with a gun, Julie with a sickle in hand. Instead of attacking John, she thrusts the instrument into her vagina killing both herself and the brown baby she may be carrying.

Again, Farber refuses to mask the intensity of human emotion, cruelty, and sadomasochism. Whereas Strindberg’s Julie also commits suicide violently – slashing her throat with a razor – the act takes place offstage, once Julie has been hypnotized by Jean. While both plays end on a negative note, a ray of hope can be detected in Mies Julie. Instead of giving into fear like Jean, John puts on the Master’s boots, picks up the gun and sickle, stands, saying, “It’s easy. Just pretend you’re him.” Christine cleans up the blood; the ancestor sings and plays her traditional bow.

This thought-provoking, well-acted, stunningly directed and designed production will tour Canada in the spring of 2014. It will play Vancouver from March 25-April 19, Montréal from April 21- May 3, and Toronto from May 5-10.

Based on August Strindberg’s Miss Julie

Written and directed by Yaël Farber

Music composed and performed by Daniel and Mathew Pencer

Produced by the Baxter Theatre Centre at the University of Cape Town and the South African State Theatre

Presented at ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Theatre, Boston, MA

CAST

Thoko Ntshinga as Christine

Bongile Mantsai as John

Hilda Cronje as Mies Julie

Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa as Ancestor, Singer, and Musician

Set and Lightning Design: Patrick Curtis

Lighting Design: Paul Abrams

Costumes: Birrie Le Roux