Lady J

Burns Hot

Lady J

by Lewis Webb and Christina James, after August Strindberg

Off Main Stage and Umbilicus Productions, at Waterloo East Theatre until 26^th November

Review by Gill Martin

The set is suitably black and bleak for the premiere of Lady J, a new translation and adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie.  Even the programme’s content-warning bodes ill: mental health issues, inter-generational trauma, suicide, emotional manipulation … violence towards animals.

The two main characters are fatally flawed in this dark and depressing study of human nature.  It’s Lady Chatterley meets Downton Abbey as class and money motivate a troubled triangle.

Angst and anger run a calamitous course as the entitled and titled Lady J, played by Marianne James, flirts and fawns, tantalises and titillates in her pursuit of her father’s butler.

The action has been transplanted from Strindberg’s Midsummer Night’s Eve in late-19th-century Sweden to Burn’s Night at an ancient university in contemporary Scotland.

Lady J is the vain, bored and pampered daughter of the widowed provost and fellow of St. Duncan’s College.  A troubled family background – arson, suicide, infidelity all feature – go some way to explain her hang-ups.

She deserts the pomp of the formal dinner to join the fun and games of the domestic staff, setting her romantic sights on the macho Jock (Joshua Urquhart), all dark hair, moustache and muscles.  He is at once flattered and enraged.

Intelligent and well-read, Jock is an impoverished social climber determined to move up in the class-ridden world, while she seems determined to move down to gain freedom from the restraints of her upbringing.  “It must be horrible to be poor”, she remarks with tactless cruelty.

As the night progresses, the intoxicating mix of Ceilidh, single malt and forbidden fruit provide a perfect recipe for a toxic union.  Passion and desire spiral ever downwards as insults and taunts are traded.  “Pauper and pleb”, she spits.  “Slut and whore”, he roars.

And all the while the long-suffering Kirsten (Anna Georgina), a homely housekeeper and cook at the big house and Jock’s almost-fiancée, remains long-suffering, God-fearing and content in her social class.  Whilst she is prepared to overlook Jock’s philandering, her venom is directed at her mistress.

Strindberg’s timeless masterpiece rings as true today as when written in 1888.  This translation by Classics Academic Dr Lewis Webb of Merton College Oxford, complemented with a contemporary adaptation by director Christina James, give the production a contemporary edge.

Gill Martin, November 2023

Photography courtesy of Off Main Stage