Thoroughly modern Julie

By GREG DIXON

You'd expect theatre rehearsals to be civilised affairs. Intense maybe, but not dangerous. But it seems run-throughs for an Auckland production of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, featuring Street Legal star Katherine Kennard, have something in common with your average footy practice.

"I accidentally elbowed Katherine in the face last night," giggles Michael Lawrence, who plays the male lead, Jean.

"It gets pretty dangerous out there," she adds. "Yeah, it gets pretty rough," Lawrence agrees.

Apparently, the previous night the pair were rehearsing a fiery scene where Miss Julie, a count's daughter who has invited the attentions of Jean the valet, pulls a cleaver from a chopping block to attack her working-class suitor.

But the cleaver stayed in the block as Kennard swung it at Lawrence. He elbowed her as he was trying to deflect it. The same evening, a table leg was broken.

It's no wonder the pair describe these rehearsals as a more draining experience than most - the passion in the piece means it is an all-consuming experience.

"At the beginning it's like, 'Here we go'. I thank god it's only just over 90 minutes [long]," says Kennard, winner of best actress at this year's New Zealand Film and Television Awards for her role in Street Legal.

"At the end you're not really on a high," Lawrence continues, "because of what you've been through. I feel quite exhausted after each run-through."

The intensity of this 19th-century Fatal Attraction comes essentially from compressing a relationship into one hot midsummer's evening. Written by Swedish playwright Strindberg in 1888, the play is his most famous work, primarily because of its stylistic innovations, defining the new idea of naturalism in the theatre.

But the play's themes and content - set against a waning of the aristocracy and the rise of the working class - were also considered shocking.

Miss Julie's psycho-sexual duel between two people from different classes and its explicit references to menstruation, blasphemy, lust and bodily functions affronted the sensibilities of the time and the play was banned for 16 years in Sweden.

But despite its age, its discussion of relationships is modern and the cross-class love affair of, say, a wealthy businesswoman and her handyman is equivalent to the play's aristocrat-affair-with-servant set-up.

Lawrence, who has impressed with his skill and intensity for years, including in Auckland Theatre Company productions of Twelve Angry Men and Death Of A Salesman, first came across the play around 15 years ago.

He was doing a piece called Burn This at the Mercury Theatre and the company's actor-director, Raymond Hawthorne, said he should read the script of Miss Julie.

"Raymond sort of thought of me of that ilk. I can see similarities [with Jean] in me."

Says Kennard: "They are characters you love and hate. You don't know who is responsible for what, who to love, who to hate, whose fault it is. But I think the traits that are deeply set in them we see every day, even though we don't like to admit it."

Strindberg was a card-carrying misogynist - as Lawrence puts it, "He [expletive] hated women" - yet Kennard thinks Miss Julie is a terribly modern woman in many ways.

"The dilemmas Julie goes through are the same ones that women go through day in, day out. I think Miss Julie was the beginning of the modern-day woman.

"She was taught by her mother that people were equal. I think women will relate to exactly what she's going through with her instinctual needs as a woman which never get looked at these days."

Miss Julie, directed by Russian director-actor Vadim Ledogorov and also featuring Shortland Street's Donogh Rees, will be the third and final piece this year from Lawrence's production company, (potent pause) Productions, following Blue/Orange and Marlene.

Miss Julie is the classic work of the three, but that doesn't mean it is the least accessible, Lawrence says. He says it's a shame that Auckland theatre does not have more productions of this kind.

"It's all to do with money. With the Auckland Theatre Company, its programmes are all to make money, which I can understand with a huge company like that.

"But this is something different and we should get back to doing these plays. There are literally thousands of pieces around like this.

"Part of my theory of theatre is to do these alternative pieces. We need variety. We want to do really good plays that [other] people will not put on because they're too hard and they cost a lot of money."

Performance

* What: Miss Julie

* Where and when: Maidment Studio, Oct 2-25, 8.30pm