MADEMOISELLE JULIE
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In fact there is a lot to like about Fegan’s script, which is less an adaptation than a translation of Strindberg’s play into a Louisianan dialect. Fegan’s dialogue is fresh and believable, especially when compared with the all-too-often stilted “definitive” English translations of Strindberg’s work. In the paperback edition of Strindberg’s plays I’ve owned since high school are lines such as “I would have scratched your eyes out!” and “Well, you tell me–you who know everything.” In Fegan’s play these lines are “I scratch your eyes out!” and “You so smart–you tell me.” The handful of French phrases Fegan has sprinkled throughout–Ah bien! C’est vrai, Pourquoi pas?–adds local color and authenticity without alienating those members of the audience who never took first-year French.
Unfortunately, Fegan’s fine adaptation has not been at all well served by Bailiwick’s flaccid production. All of the visual elements are in place: apt costumes by Margaret Fitzsimmons Morettini, perfectly designed lighting by Tom Fleming, a wonderfully detailed set by Dan Ostling. But at the center of the play are two actors, Jeanne M. Dwan as Julie and David Barr as Jean, who can’t seem to generate enough heat together onstage to melt an ice cube. Yet somehow we’re supposed to believe that these two are so strongly drawn to each other that even taboos against the commingling of races cannot keep them apart.
Mademoiselle Julie is no more about the “dashing of dreams” than it is about the dangers of dabbling in voodoo. If anything, Mademoiselle Julie, like Miss Julie, is about the tragedy of getting what one wants. Julie secretly dreams of falling from a great height –you don’t have to be Freud to know what this means–while Jean dreams both of climbing a tall tree and of one day possessing Julie. Both Julie and Jean’s dreams are fulfilled, with disastrous results.
