Howard Brenton - Miss Julie

August Strindberg

MISS JULIE

adapted by

Howard Brenton

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Howard Brentons version of Miss Julie was first produced by Theatre by the Lake and Jerymn Street Theatre. It was first performed at the Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, on 30 June 2017 and later at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, on 14 November 2017. The cast was as follows:

This version was originally commissioned by English Touring Theatre, and uses a literal translation by Agnes Broome.

Seances with August

I know it was a cheek of me to attempt to write a version of August Strindbergs masterpiece in English, and not only because I dont know a word of Swedish. I wanted to do something thats impossible to write a play so true to Strindberg that it would seem it was he, not I, who was writing Miss Julie in English.

Its a fashion for playwrights to bring their own worlds to classics, which means mucking them about to make them modern and relevant. This is an age that craves instant, twittered moral messages. But there are no easy messages in Strindberg its visceral writing, deeply human but often irrational. Hes the first great modernist playwright, yet very close to the Greeks, particularly Euripides. A bitter humour flashes as his characters flail about, locked in a tragic endgame they cannot escape. The sordid becomes magnificent. Miss Julie comes from a dark and mysterious place in the yes, Ill write soul here, rather than mind. In his last great play, To Damascus, Strindberg came to believe in the soul.

He was a troubled and troubling genius. His output was enormous plays, novels, autobiographies, writings on alchemy, history books, childrens books. It is wildly uneven. He had extreme love and hate relationships with just about everything and everyone his country, his wives, his contemporaries. It is an understatement to say he was ideologically unstable at times he was an atheist, an occultist, a socialist, an elitist, a reactionary, a progressive, a passionate advocate for, then a savage critic of, feminism. He would stray into some very dark areas, then pull back and reclaim some kind of balance. He was prosecuted for blasphemy and denounced as one of the most dangerous men alive. And yet there are many accounts that he was a shy, beautiful and very sexy man. Put a modern mask on him and youll muffle him.

I didnt read any other English translations or versions of the play or look at tapes or extracts of famous productions on YouTube. I wanted to be as far as possible uncontaminated, as near as I could be to the source.

I worked solely from a literal translation by the Swedish scholar Agnes Broome. Agnes and I have worked on Strindberg before, she did the literal for my version of The Dance of Death, also staged by the Lakesides Miss Julie director, Tom Littler. Tom, Agnes and I are Strindberg obsessives, but whether well ever really understand him, I doubt.

A literal translation is an attempt to record exactly what is there in the original again, an impossibility, but thats the intention. Sometimes there will be variant versions of difficult lines though, on the whole, Strindberg is a very direct writer. Theres no attempt at good or bad writing, a literal is like an X-ray, it shows you what is there but not how it lives.

So what I wrote is, yes, a bold reworking, using all I could muster to make it alive. But I took nothing away nor did I add anything. I had a strict rule that all the thoughts, expressions and images must be from the original. The rule was liberating, it got me down into the engine room of a great writers work. I began to see the cross-currents, the strategies, his phenomenal dramatic skill and beneath the skill, the tragic vision.

Ive done versions in the past of Jean Genet, Bertolt Brecht and Georg Bchner its a way for a playwright to work out, to teach you the craft. But of all of them Strindberg is the most difficult. Genius and madness, dark and light, are so entwined in his work you really have to keep your nerve and not cut, not editorialise, to make it more acceptable.

Now for the cranky bit. In trying to make an authentic version of the play you cant recreate its effect on its first audiences. This isnt a museum exercise. His world no longer exists, how can we get him to write his play for ours?

You have to go into a state of seance. You do all the research, read all you can that he wrote, but finally you have to start the magic. You have to contact his spirit. Writers have a secret in a way, we can talk to the dead. Its just what we do, we get into a kind of fugue, a state of mind. We dont like talking about it. August, thank you. I tried not to muck you about. You encouraged me to attempt a ferocious beauty in my language. I learnt a lot from hearing your voice, I hope our audiences will too.

Howard Brenton

Characters

MISS JULIE, aristocrat, twenty-five years old

JEAN, valet, thirty years old

KRISTIN, cook, thirty-five years old

The scene is the kitchen of the Earls manor house on Midsummers Eve.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

A large kitchen.

Shelves edged with scalloped paper and crammed with pots and pans of copper, iron and tin.

Glass double doors set in a large stone arch, through which can be seen a fountain with a cupid, lilac bushes in full bloom and the tops of Lombardy poplars.

A large tiled stove with a chimney hood.

A servants pine dinner table, painted white, with a few chairs.

An icebox, a sink, a scullery table.

A large, old-fashioned bell above the door and a speaking tube fitted to its left.

On the table there is a bouquet of lilacs in a large Japanese spice jar. The stove is decorated with birch leaves. The floor is strewn with sprays of juniper.

KRISTIN is standing at the stove frying something in a pan. She is wearing a pale cotton dress and a kitchen apron.

JEAN enters. He is dressed in livery and is carrying a pair of large riding boots with spurs. He puts then on the floor in a conspicuous place.

JEAN. Miss Julies gone mad tonight again. Raving mad.

KRISTIN. So youre back.

JEAN. I drove the Earl to the station then, coming back, I passed the barn. I fancied a dance, so in I went and there she was: middle of the floor, all eyes on her, spinning round and round with the gamekeeper! But when she sees me she leaves him stranded, rushes up and says: Jean! Waltz! Now! And then, oh God, the way she waltzed Ive never felt anything like it, the woman is insane!

KRISTIN. Always has been. But its been really bad this past fortnight since her engagement went up in smoke.

JEAN. What happened there, a decent enough man, wasnt he? Even though he was broke. Ah well, choosy lot, the upper classes.