THEATRE

By Mark Brown

Miss Julie

Perth Theatre

Three stars

Touring until March 9

Miss Julie, arguably the magnum opus of the bard of Swedish theatre August Strindberg, is a play well known to Scottish audiences. South African dramatist Yael Farber’s outstanding adaptation, entitled (in Afrikaans) Mies Julie, premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012, returning there in 2017.

Zinnie Harris’s version (which, entirely plausibly, relocates Strindberg’s drama to Scotland during the industrial militancy of the mid-1920s) was toured by the National Theatre of Scotland in 2006 and staged again by Dominic Hill at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 2014. Now Perth Theatre is tackling Harris’s sharp, vibrant adaptation.

Truth be told, this latest production, which is directed by emerging director Shilpa T-Hyland, does not benefit from comparison with the various stagings Scotland has enjoyed over the last 13 years. Strindberg’s tale of mangled class and gender relations (in which Julie, the daughter of a powerful and authoritarian industrialist, and John, the capitalist’s trusted butler, collide in the most fatal of attractions) requires an ever intensifying atmosphere of sexual tension.

That T-Hyland’s production lacks this essential ingredient is due overwhelmingly to a single instance of miscasting. Sad to say, young actor Hiftu Quasem is patently ill-prepared for such an emotionally complex and demanding role as Julie.

Quasem has the necessary vulnerability, but, crucially, she lacks her character’s complex mix of seductive charisma, self-loathing, recklessness and underlying class hatred. Consequently, her performance seems brittle and uncertain.

Which is a tremendous pity, as Lorn Macdonald (John) and Helen Mackay (Christine, the upright, young servant who is engaged to the butler) give powerful, nuanced performances on designer Jen McGinley’s slightly rigid, assiduously detailed set. Composer MJ McCarthy’s music and sound are too emotionally instructive (like Spielberg at his sentimental worst), adding to the sense of this uneven production as a disappointing missed opportunity.

Miss Julie is at Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Feb 27 – March 2 and The Studio, Edinburgh, March 6-9

The Electrifying Mr Johnston

The Studio, Edinburgh

Three stars

Touring until March 9

Firstly, allow me to declare an interest. Robert Dawson Scott, the author of this new play about the origins of Scotland’s hydroelectric system, has, over the years, been both a critical colleague and an editor of mine.

Needless to say, now that he has transitioned from gamekeeper to poacher, I will review his theatre work according to my professional motto: “without mercy or malice”.

In 2013 Dawson Scott opened his account as a dramatist with The Great Train Race, a lively and good-humoured lunchtime play about the late 19th-century competition to run the fastest rail service between London and Aberdeen. With The Electrifying Mr Johnston he returns to his twin interests in Scottish history and engineering.

The play offers an intriguingly fictionalised account of the highpoint of the career of Tom Johnston (Labour MP, one-time “Red Clydesider” and the man behind the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board). In director Alasdair McCrone’s crisp production for Mull Theatre, Stephen Clyde gives a fine performance as the purposeful, if somewhat self-regarding, Johnston.

Meanwhile Alan MacKenzie convinces as the fictional Sandy MacKenzie, a young, socialist journalist (like Johnston’s younger self, interestingly enough) who loses much of his adoration for Johnston as the untidy moral and political realities of the hydro dam building project come home to roost. Beth Marshall completes the strong cast, playing a startling array of characters, including, humorously, the Speaker of the House of Commons and The Queen.

The play itself is a well-researched, if slightly stilted, affair. The shortness and sheer number of its scenes give it a somewhat awkward, staccato structure.

Martin Low’s illustrative, electric soundtrack is uninspired, as is Alan Melvin’s one-dimensional set (which depicts, in abstract, parts of the electricity grid).

Electrifying? Not quite, but it is an enjoyable and interesting short play which boasts a wry, political wit.

For tour dates, visit: comar.co.uk