The House Party
Party Walls
The House Party
by Laura Lomas
Chichester Festival Theatre and Headlong at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 22nd March
Review by John Davies
It is Julie’s 18th birthday party. She and her friend Christine are waiting for the others to arrive. It’s the calm before the storm. Christine is being driven to Cambridge later that evening with her boyfriend Jon, in preparation for an interview for a place at the University. But Julie has other plans and what unfolds is an alcohol-fuelled power-play of sex and class, as she seeks to manipulate Christine and Jon to suit her desires.
Laura Lomas has created in The House Party a modern reworking of Strindberg’s Miss Julie. It still retains a focus on class, friendship and privilege, but set against the backdrop of today’s teenage tensions. In lowering the age of the protagonists, there is now a feeling that despite their bravado, Julie (the spoilt rich girl), Christine and Jon (who both live on the local estate) are not sure of themselves and are trying to discover who they are – often through how they are perceived by those around them. The dialogue, particularly between the two women, has a feeling of point scoring and one-upmanship, and their relationship appears to flip between friendship and mistress-servant. I thought the nature and origin of their friendship could have been developed further, particularly given they are from two very different worlds.
As Julie seeks to ensure her “friends” do what she wants, with increasingly erratic and behaviour, we wonder is she the expert manipulator or just a scared teenage girl – worried about being left alone. With the increasing level of drinking it becomes difficult to decipher when, it ever, we see the real Julie – even to the point of the play’s climax. No spoilers here – you’ll have to see it!
The staging and direction from Holly Race Roughan are excellent. The naturalistic and very physical approach keeps the party and the emotions real and raw. The minimalist set from designer Lauren Elstein serves as kitchen-lounge in a very high-end property. It uses a glass rear wall to good effect, with back-lighting providing a window into some of Julie and Christine’s hopes and dreams. We also have glimpses of the other rooms of the party, which occasionally spills onto the stage – bringing us into the beating heart of the party. These superbly choreographed moments from the ensemble (actors from Frantic Assembly’s talent generation programme) bring injections of high energy into the proceedings. They are used to good effect, both driving the tension and giving the audience a perspective on the character’s feelings and intentions played out on the dance floor.
The three main actors do a good job of bringing depth to their characters and conveying the complexity of feeling and roller-coaster of their emotions. Synnøve Karlsen and Sesley Hope, as Julie and Christine, showed us a friendship that is strong, but under stress, and while they could have brought more energy to the opening scene – they were a compelling force throughout the play. Tom Lewis as Jon brought a more laid back feel to the proceedings, suggesting a confidence in himself, which was later found wanting. My only criticism would be that not all the dialogue was audible, most noticeably at some of the high emotion moments. Having to strain to hear the actors inevitably breaks the engagement with the play. I suspect the play’s end scene – a future set coda – might split audiences. The set change cleverly provides a visual contrast to the respective backgrounds of Julie and Christine and the scene serves as a sort of re-set to their relationship, bringing us full circle. However, while I found it interesting, for me it didn’t add much development to the play; the party was sufficient.
This is most definitely a Miss Julie for the today’s generation, but which I suspect will chime for many previous generations too, as the trials and pitfalls of youth are not altogether new; though possibly more fraught in this age of social media. It is definitely The House Party worth attending and I expect it to have a strong following.
John Davies, March 2025
Photography by Ikim Yum
Mark Aspen 