Stage shows, movies and exhibitions

Helpmann-winning director Kip Williams ( Suddenly Last Summer) tackles Strindberg’s transgressive and classbusting heroine for the MTC. By Tim Byrne

August Strindberg’s 1888 play Miss Julie took 16 years to get performed in his native Sweden, but since then has rarely been off the stage. It was a sensation everywhere it played around the world, and even now has the power to shock an audience with its uncompromising sexual politics and very bad behaviour.

Kip Williams has wanted to direct it for years, attracted to this “radical and problematic woman” who cuts into her own privileged life like a rusty can opener, seducing and falling for her father’s roguish and opportunistic valet.

“It’s about transgression. These are two people who seek to eschew the very potent external regulatory forces that are acting upon them, and find a new future for themselves. People who have to forge new identities through an act of transgression are a common thematic link in my work, I think.”

One thing every production needs to confront is the fractious gender politics that are the engine of the drama. Strindberg’s misogyny is well documented, which Williams sees as both a provocation and a challenge. “It’s clear that resentment toward women drove him to write the play. The important thing is to cast a critical analysis on that, to allow the audience to see it for the problematic work it is.”

Williams is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most intellectually rigorous directors in the country, and chatting with him reveals a man determined to break through the inscrutability of human motivation. Given that Miss Julie centres on two highly unpredictable, quicksilver personalities, he seems the perfect fit to wrestle it into the modern age.

Not that it needs much wrestling, given the uncanny contemporary resonances. The play was written at the birth of capitalism, but has much to say to us at its crisis point. “This question of class is really big at the moment. Capitalism is at a rupturing point; it’s perhaps not the enduring social and economic framework we thought it was going to be.”

Mark Leonard Winter, returning to the same stage he set on fire last year in Birdland, will play Jean, Strindberg’s quintessential self-made man. Replacing Emma Hamilton in the role of the doomed Miss Julie is Robin Mcleavy, Williams’ initial casting choice. “It was one of most excited phone calls I’ve had when I told Mark that Robin was going to play the role.” Expect sparks to fly.

Southbank Theatre, the Sumner 140 Southbank Blvd, Southbank 3006. www.mtc.com.au. Various times. $39-$115. Apr 16-May 21.

“The question of class is really big at the moment. Capitalism is rupturing”