At the Studio Hall of the Comedy Theatre, in Strindberg’s Fröken Julie (Miss Julie), directed by Liviu Lucaci, come together three energies successfully creating a universe and getting the message across. Strindberg’s world, risen from the darkened lands of humankind, as fits modern drama, comes to life in a set pertaining to Flemish painting. This is the frame in which the characters’ unfold their story, which the play rather veils in mystery than unveils aided by the performance the director requested. It is a show the late critic Dumitru Solomon longed for in the 1990s: a show with human destinies.
Strindberg’s interest for alchemy and the occult is bespoken in a text which reveals the implacable force of the irrational. That is the main hero in Miss Julie. The count’s daughter, the footman names Jean and Kristin the cook are the toys of the absurd on Midsummer night in the kitchen of the palace. The noblewoman yields to lust, young Jean joins her, and Kristin is the one who embodies a rigid morale which cannot live up to the moment. Therefore, nothing new or spectacular for that matter. A Madame Bovary, a sort of Julien Sorel and a Jane Doe become in Strindberg’s play the passive forces of a manipulative agency.
The director respects a certain ambiguity and the irrefutable bizarreness which represent e genuine challenge for actors in the universe imagined by the playwright. Neither does he offer clarification, nor does he tell us what we are meant to believe by this staging. He does not limit the characters themselves or the various perspectives on them which is essential in the world of theatre. The Freudian eyeglass through which the playwright looks at his characters, making them confront desires forbidden by social, religious mores or otherwise, is present in fine shades as the director’s view is by no means superficial, and the actors keep the pace, without turning to artifices, successfully interpreting some of the most difficult scripts.
Liviu Lucaci gambled on the actors. He took a risk and he won. He cast an experienced actress, Delia Nartea, alongside young gradutes, Şerban Gomoi and Andreea Bârsan. As part of the audience, one cannot operate with limited categories, saying that one actor is lucid and the other one imaginative. Their play is intense and displays a lot of panache. It fills up a space, creates content and gives it a form. Delia Nartea plays an adamant and passionate miss Iulia on the one hand, and a vulnerable, weak and helpless creature on the other. Andreea Bârsan’s portrayal of Kristin is very humorous and builds up a delicate character, a plausible and rich presence. Şerban Gomoi easily imposes himself, with the self-assurance of an inexperienced actor, without faking it in any register he undertakes. He is a footman with the potential of a parvenu lady killer, a hot-blooded man in love, the embodiment of disdainful masculinity, a passionate moralist and so on and so forth…
The noblewoman, the cook and the footman I saw on the stage of the Comedy Theatre join together every poetical and dramatic nuance of darkness which haunt Strindberg’s writings. However, their acting isn’t egregious, but natural and indulgent, discreetly mastering the emotion one can’t do without.
Translated by: Alina-Olimpia Miron, MTTLC, 2nd year
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