One hundred and twenty-seven years after August Strindberg penned his seminal naturalist tragedy Miss Julie, it’s not difficult to feel the still-resonating percussion of its assault on bourgeois theatrical sensibilities. Beyond Strindberg’s overhaul of performance conventions (no footlights, minimal makeup, placing actors where they might actually stand in a room rather than stranding them before the prompter’s box) is the title character’s ferocious sexuality. Miss Julie, an aristocrat’s daughter, addles, provokes, humiliates, and emasculates her father’s valet until he ravishes her in the servants’ quarters—while his fiancee sleeps in the next room. Hell, the sordid mess is still scandalous today.
But even off his game, Roberts is dynamic enough, and Green’s pacing taut enough, to keep the action driving credibly, inexorably toward the tragic ending. And while that ending feels rather perfunctory, getting there is reward enough. v
Through 9/26: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM; also Mon 8/31, 8 PM Strawdog Theatre Company 3829 N. Broadway 773-528-9696strawdog.org $28
