On Broadway

Saw preview of the Roundabout Theater Company's "After Miss Julie," an adaptation by Patrick Marber of Strindberg's "Miss Julie." While no doubt radical for its time(1888), Strindberg's peculiar naturalism isn't helped by Marber's adaptation which further explores sex and class as a conflict and power struggle. This production moves the action up to an English country house on the evening of the British Labour Party's historic landslide win in the 1945 election, which director Mark Brokaw in a recent interview compared to the situation around "our last election here with Obama. There was this great collective release. It was a moment of seismic change and possibility."

The one act play opens with a great deal of fussy, dramatic puttering, settling into a middle section of somewhat predictable inter-class flirting and bickering until finally getting down to the action, and lots of it. While the show isstill in previews, the unquestionably talented cast (Sienna Miller, Jonny Lee Miller, and Marin Ireland), who portray the restraints of class and fires of passion with equal verve, seemed to this theatergoer a bit confused if not put out, as though -- and as the advertising suggests -- they had signed up for Tennessee Williams, but ended up in a somewhat stilted rewrite of "Fawlty Towers." Class distinctions in Britain seems an oversized topic for a relatively short, three character drama, and when it collides with sex, it seemed to become a little too overheated a little too fast, until, when it reaches its somewhat predictable ending, everyone, cast and audience, is left wondering exactly what happened.