{"id":1620,"date":"2018-06-18T10:58:23","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T09:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2018-06-18T16:21:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T15:21:40","slug":"propwatch-the-blender-in-julie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/06\/propwatch-the-blender-in-julie.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the blender in Julie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The talk around us was all about the dishwashers. \u2018Look, there\u2019s two of them,\u2019 murmured the woman in front of us. \u2018Three dishwashers,\u2019 gasped a guy in the row behind. By the end, I counted four: it turns out there were seven<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What else does the kitchen in Julie<\/a>,<\/em> Polly Stenham\u2019s reboot of Strindberg, contain? An ostentatiously long table\/worktop. A couple of cupboards fitted alongside the dishwashers. No visible hob or oven (at least from our low vantage point right at the front). Just a blender. Ah, the blender.<\/p>\n

Tom Scutt\u2019s artful design initially looks like swank minimalism, before revealing itself as mind-tweakingly weird. Strindberg\u2019s play has historically been many things \u2013 tragi-misogynist naturalism, poetic feminism<\/a>, a powderkeg<\/a> of racial and sexual politics \u2013 but these versions have often shown real-type stuff happening in a real-type room. Real cooking, real drinking, real cleaning. Carrie Cracknell\u2019s new production pushes that to extremes. Much of the action is stylised \u2013 especially the gurning chorus of contemptuous partygoers \u2013 but there\u2019s also a lot of real work in this anti-cooking kitchen, and it\u2019s all done by the housekeeper, Kristina.<\/p>\n

Stenham<\/a> places the play in monied modern Hampstead, where Julie (Vanessa Kirby), child of privilege, has scooched into her thirties with no sense of vocation, no stable sense of self (that she\u2019s a few years older than Strindberg\u2019s character makes her seem even more lost and aimless). She\u2019s dropped out of universities (plural), abandoned novels, returned resentfully to her unseen father\u2019s home. Kristina \u2013 a superbly felt and held performance by Thalissa Teixeira<\/a>\u00a0(above)<\/em> \u2013 is the Brazilian housekeeper. Julie claims they\u2019re friends. They\u2019re not friends.<\/p>\n

The play\u2019s power relations are acutely political: eddying around race, money, gender. In this gleaming but semi-functional kitchen, the dynamic becomes stark. Julie makes mess; Kristina clears it up. Julie trashes; Kristina tidies. Julie can trail chaos because Kristina will diligently load the dishwasher, swab the surfaces, hold back Julie\u2019s hair as she voms, not out of friendship but because it\u2019s her damn job. In Teixeira\u2019s performance she tries not to hate it, but that doesn\u2019t mean she enjoys it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Blender far left in the Julie kitchen. Photos by Richard Hubert Smith<\/p><\/div>\n

Privilege means Julie\u2019s family functions despite its dysfunction. Mother committed suicide; father stays away as much as possible; daughter is a nightmare (Kirby doesn\u2019t soften the boho arrogance). It\u2019s the staff that keep them going \u2013 chauffeur Jean (Eric Kofi Abrefa) and Kristina. Yet the massed ranks of dishwashers reinforce this kitchen as a place of containment rather than stew-scented nurture. We don\u2019t see any cooking (Kristina merely sifts icing sugar over the birthday-cake berries). A household with this many dishwashers has a lot to scour, a lot to hide. It\u2019s a hopeless attempt to start from a clean slate, again and again.<\/p>\n

In most productions of Miss Julie<\/em>, Christine is the skivvying afterthought. Muttering pieties and scandal, head down over her chores, a drudge too worn out to speak. No wonder John and Julie find it so easy to betray her. Not here, where their late-night bunk-up is not only mutually damaging, but upsetting for an audience who might see Teixeira as the play\u2019s most compelling figure. Strindberg\u2019s character dully assents when invited to become the lovers\u2019 third wheel, but Stenham gives her the evening\u2019s most blazing speech \u2013 a fury of hurt and long-delayed truth-telling. It\u2019s this spotlight on Julie\u2019s self-deceptions, rather than the underwritten Jean, that pushes the birthday girl to the brink and beyond.<\/p>\n

Which means the blender. ‘I wondered why that was there,’ said my pal, having looked away for its whirring moment of grand guignol glory. (I don\u2019t want to spoil, so will update with a more explicit description once the production is done). Yes, it\u2019s a kitchen item; no, it\u2019s used for carnage, not cookery. And when Kristina returns to the room during the play\u2019s final minutes,she has another mess to clean. Another mess not of her making; another mess slopped into her hands. Kristina deserves better. She deserves her own play.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The talk around us was all about the dishwashers. \u2018Look, there\u2019s two of them,\u2019 murmured the woman in front of us. \u2018Three dishwashers,\u2019 gasped a guy in the row behind. By the end, I counted four: it turns out there were seven. What else does the kitchen in Julie, Polly Stenham\u2019s reboot of Strindberg, contain? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,322,321,34,452],"class_list":{"0":"post-1620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-national-theatre","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-theatre","12":"tag-tom-scutt","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}