After Miss Julie review – sex takes second place to snarling class warfare

2026-02-17 - 13:15

Park theatre, London Patrick Marber updates Strindberg’s story to a country house in 1945, where upstairs-downstairs disaffection drives the drama Strindberg claimed that he wrote Miss Julie during a month of “enforced celibacy” in 1888. The resulting tragedy has a snarling, pent-up energy. Patrick Marber’s 1995 version, originally written for TV, unfolds in a similarly compact 75 minutes – but turns less on sex than a very British class warfare. We’re on the country estate of a Labour peer, on the night of the party’s 1945 election landslide. As the staff celebrate offstage – Chattanooga Choo Choo and In the Mood – John the chauffeur (Tom Varey) sinks a glass of his master’s best burgundy. Like Churchill, he says, it’s “robust, full-bodied – and finished”. Continue reading...