MIES JULIE
Restitutions of Body and Soil Since The Bantu Land Act No 27 of 1913 and The Immorality Act No 5 of 1927. Based on August Strindberg’s Miss Julie.
WRITTEN, ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY: Yael Farber
CAST: Hilda Cronje, Thoko Ntshinga, Bongile Mantsai, Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa
SOUNDSCAPE: Daniel and Matthew Pencer
VENUE: State Theatre’s Arena
UNTIL: October 7
RATING: ***
A playwright and director who tells South African stories that explore the psyche, Yael Farber is someone who goes for the jugular. There’s no pussyfooting around as she tackles issues that are seething just below the surface.
Cleverly she picks Miss Julie and, just shy of a century after these laws came into force, she attaches the Land Act of 1913 and the Immorality Act of 1927, to drive her point home.
In the past, Scandinavian and Russian plays were often produced locally because of similarities such as a love of the land, which paralleled the Afrikaner’s.
Farber lunges into today’s world with much more clarity, zooming in on a couple of young adults who have grown up together but on opposite sides of the colour line in a mistress-slave type of relationship so familiar in apartheid SA.
She sets the story now with none of the issues resolved.
The white girl who will inherit the farm and the black man who works for her father come together in what at first seems just a taunt from a brazen woman who feels in control. There’s constant see-sawing in their relationship, where the power slips from the one to the other and back – while a storm is brewing, the Karoo slumber seemingly aching to unleash, inside and out.
There are many moments to hold on to and mostly these are the intimate scenes between mother and child or two people who are battling their emotions from a past that cannot but cloud their future.
But then Farber allows herself to be pulled into the enormity of the struggle that no one seems to know how to tackle. She throws out almost every argument and then some to counter what is flying around when people talk about restitution.
Instead of allowing the intimate love story to unfold in all its horror against the backdrop of a country yet to deal with so many of the past’s disparities, Farber tackles the bigger picture and tries to tell it all.
What the script needs is to be pared down and stripped – there are too many anecdotes about “tannies” and the toughness one needs to survive in this land.
It seemed at some point we were being given everything and the kitchen sink, rather than getting to the emotions of the story. You need the love story to rip at your gut, which it never does.
It’s a shocking staging – something Farber is a master at – and it grabs you by the throat but, even with strong acting from especially Mantsai, Ntshinga and the haunting sounds of Lungisa, it was the physicality of the production rather than the stirrings of the soul that moved you. Cronjé’s performance is one you need to buy into, even if her character is slightly unhinged – a certain earthiness would have added dimension to the character.
Mies Julie feels much longer than its 90 minutes.
In conclusion it is a play with promise and potential, rather than one that shifts minds and envelops hearts.
• In marking the centenary of August Strindberg’s death, the Market Theatre presents an adaptation of Miss Julie – a performance featuring Anna Pettersson, in a collaboration between Sweden and South Africa. It opens on October 24. Mies Julie is to run at the Market from mid-January.