Class Action

Class distinctions between the aristocracy and the serving class blur in messy and merciless ways in Princess Squid's intense production of Miss Julie. Portrayed by Sayra Player, Julie, the daughter of a count, is a woman bored with propriety. Restless, horny and tired of what's right and wrong, she's a countess on a hot tin roof.

August Strindberg's classic drama opens, in fact, with the line "Miss Julie is crazy again tonight." But she's not so easily dismissed. One humid midsummer's eve, her ennui gets mixed up with alcohol, and she selects as that evening's amusement her father's valet, Jean (Scott Cordes). He's game, to the chagrin of his prim intended, Kristine (Jennifer Mays), the manor cook. But Julie's more than just game -- she's palpably lubricious.

As they say in courtrooms and tough-love meetings, you gotta pay the consequences.

The three-character show opens with Julie, Jean and seven dancers behind a scrim. The pair first lock eyes at an impromptu dance, and director Kara Armstrong shows that she's no purist by setting the scene to trip-hop and electronica, not some musty minuet from the past century. When Julie pursues Jean into the kitchen, she is charmed that he and Kristine are engaged in something like dating, but she's resolute in her pursuit of bedding the valet.

For her part, Kristine, a good, churchgoing girl, is appalled at Julie's crass overtures to one of the help. And the dancers, mutely standing in as the house's other servants, are relentless in their mocking of Julie. What they don't do, though, is dissuade her. Once Julie is successful in her seduction, Kristine can't imagine working much longer for such a vulgarian, but, as Jean points out to her, "Isn't it a comfort to know they're no better than us?"

As the alcohol wears off, Julie (like so many before and after her) realizes that she's mistaken Jean's erectile function for love. He's fairly dismissive of her but also a bit intoxicated by her station in life. Historically separated by their places of birth, they're now equal in having rocked the system, and they scheme to flee their invisible chains with a vague plan of running a hotel. When Julie shows up for their escape, she's brought only the clothes on her back -- to her, a major sacrifice -- except for a large, conspicuous birdcage and a feathered friend, one of the last vestiges of her girlhood. In Strindberg's view, it's the beginning of the end.

Julie is a hell of a part for a woman in her twenties, and Player is never less than ambitious. A few of her gestures are a bit mannered (the old back-of-the-hand-to-the-forehead trick), though she does find some organic chemistry with her character's impetuousness and rage. Cordes plays Jean with the unstudied nonchalance of a valet whose master is away. When his boss returns late in the play, though, he reverts back to subservience -- and it repulses him. Mays is fine in a role written more as a symbol than as a flesh-and-blood human.

Ruth Dyer's choreography is an intriguing mix of archival ballet and contemporary, Isadora Duncanish steps. Mary Traylor's costumes nicely contrast Julie's bourgeois leanings and Kristine's and Jean's less lofty positions. After the fateful liaison, Julie is presciently dressed in a manner that reflects the dire events to come: Her arms and shoulders are immodestly exposed while a hard-shelled corset seems to be slowly squeezing the life out of her.