Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Mies Julie (World Stage)

Bongile Mantsai, Hilda Cronje (photo by Rodger  Bosch)

Mies Julie Misses
by Jason Booker

The overly warm theatre. Filled with smoke. A vivid red dance floor, painted to look like broken stone tiles. A slowly spinning plantation-style ceiling fan. An old stove turned upstage.

Welcome to South Africa. Specifically the fictitious Veenen Plaas (meaning Weeping Farm) in the semi-desert region known as The Karoo.

And welcome to a show that comes at a fever pitch, intense and shouted and bouncing off the furniture, where strangely the stakes never seem as high for the characters as they do for the symbols and history they represent.

Welcome to Yaël Farber’s Mies Julie.

This is a world where melodrama rules, where the only quiet moments come when the ancestors are invoked and the live-performed score (featuring incredible vocals from Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa) is permitted to overwhelm the audience’s experience.

Review: (Montreal / Theatre) Mies Julie

Bongile Mantsai, Hilda Cronje, Thoko Ntshinga, Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa (photo by Murdo MacLeod)

History repeats itself, over and over again.
by Chad Dembski

Often in reviewing live events we are able to get two tickets to a show and invite a friend or peer to see it with us. For Mies Julie, which opened last night at Place des Arts in their 5e salle series, I invited a designer who I have collaborated with a couple times in the past. A work as complex, intense and layered as Mies Julie deserves a good discussion afterwards as it is a piece with many ideas.  

The play seems to almost begin the moment you walk in the lobby which is filled with smoke that is pouring from the theatre. As I entered I noticed one of the performers sitting in the audience on the far side right who seemed stoic and highly focused. The lights faded down and as the music swelled I got the chills associated with those first moments of an event where you are not quite sure what will happen. The woman in the audience got up and slowly made her way to the stage, adding singing to the music mix and providing a wonderful atmosphere to the mysterious beginning. As each performer entered from the audience doors I got a sense immediately that this would be a more radical adaptation of Stringberg’s classic tale of innocence to experience. Immediately a physical nature is established by the two main characters; Julie and Peter, jumping off tables and using the stage to maximum effect. Physical repetition is used quite often; Peter polishing black boots, over and over again and Julie pulling at her dress and hair. This connection to the physical nature of all three performers was transfixing as I don’t often see so much physical interpretation of character in Canadian theatre.

In a Word... Yaël Farber on Mies Julie

Strindberg's African Dance of Death

by Chad Dembski

Yaël Farber is a multiple award-winning director and playwright of international acclaim. Her productions have toured the world extensively - earning her a reputation for hard-hitting, controversial works of the highest artistic standard. Her most recent work MIES JULIE (written and directed by Farber) has won a string of international awards; was recently named one of the Top Ten Productions of 2012 by The New York Times, and 5th Best Production of 2012 by The Guardian. Ms. Farber was named ARTIST OF THE YEAR in her native South Africa (2003). She is the recipient of four national BEST DIRECTOR AWARDS (South Africa 1991, 2002, 2008; 2012) She has won: twice the SCOTSMAN FRINGE FIRST AWARD (Edinburgh 2000 & 2012); twice THE ANGEL HERALD AWARD (Edinburgh 2003 & 2012); A SONY GOLD AWARD (London 2001) and the BEST OF EDINBURGH AWARD (Edinburgh 2012). She has been nominated for a DRAMA DESK AWARD (NYC 2007) and a TMA BEST DIRECTOR AWARD (UK 2008). Her productions have toured across the major cities of the USA, the UK (including in London's West End and at The Barbican Centre), Canada, Australia, Japan, across Europe and Africa. Ms. Farber is a past invitee of: The Lincoln Theatre Directors' Workshop (NYC1999); Mabou Mines Theatre Company (NYC 2001); and In Transit Laboratory at Haus de Kulturen der Welt (Berlin 2001). She developed a work in residence at The Joseph Papp Public Theatre (NYC 2000); developed a new text atSundance Theatre Laboratory (Utah 2001); was Playwright-in-Residence for Nightwood Theatre (Toronto 2010); and an invited participant in Anna Deavere Smith's 'Bodies on the Line' Artist Residency (NYC 2010). Ms. Farber was Head of the Directing Program at the prestigious National Theatre School of Canada 2009 – 2012. She premiers a new production NIRBHAYA at the Edinburgh Festival 2013 – focused on the rape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey, which caused an international outcry. Ms. Farber was recently named amongst City Press's top 100 South Africans. Her plays are published by OBERON BOOKS (London, UK). Farber will direct Arthur Miller’s THE CRUCIBLE for London’s West End theatre The Old Vic this year.

CHARPO:  When did the inspiration for the idea for Mies Julie begin?  What were the first seeds for the adaptation?

FARBER:  I love to adapt the classics. I work off the foundation that audiences are familiar with but then subvert that as well. I love the challenge to try and connect to a contemporary classic... find the ways it surprised or shocked its first audiences.  I try to re-discover what those shocking factors were when it was first written. I try to find those outlets, when I read work or see work: What isn’t there?  How is it different now?  

I had read the play 20 years ago as a student but then returned to it again a few years ago when I was teaching at the National Theatre School directing program and came upon a scene from Miss Julie. As I was working with the students, images kept coming to me from the scene we were doing. A tree growing out of the centre of the floor was the strongest image that stayed with me and gave me the inspiration for the adaptation. I always start with images and when I re-read the play images kept flooding in and I instantly knew it had to be set in South Africa.