I saw (MISS) JULIE with Phindie editor Chris Munden, at the Bainbridge Green Park. Conveniently, we brought our own coffee table, recently purchased from Philly AIDS Thrift. It was so good to see Rachel O’Hanlon-Rodriguez. She told me once she was writing a play about Green Jalapeño.
This reworking of Strindberg directed by Elise D’Avella and adapted by Kasey Phillips.
(MISS) JULIE by Svaha Theatre Collective was like a mid-summer ball in the beginning, twisting class and love, and toward the end we have no sympathies for (Miss) Julie. The play begins with a drinking party.
Rich people need it. Poor people have it. If you eat it then you die.
We see Miss Julie, played by Rachel O’Hanlon-Rodriguez, and Jean, played by Michael Pliskin, locking lips.
(Miss) Julie is leaving with her suit case in hand. The woman in Victorian texts appeals to the inability to do something lasting or important. It is still very much discussed, the power of women, sex, intellect, wages, and authorship. Miss Julie is presented as an alternative portrait of a well to do woman by the ways her mother, played by Kelly McAnally, and Kristine, played by Jess Otterbine, make a silhouette of female dancers with street signs and parking meters.
Below: Jean, played by Michael Pliskin, on an old candlestick telephone (I like this gesture of past time technology)
In the end the dirt is a symbol for the class differences which vanish into the burlesque.
[Fifth Street Plaza on Bainbridge Green, 5th and Bainbridge streets] September 7-13, 2017; fringearts.com/event/miss-julie