As the audience gathers in Leeds Playhouse's Courtyard to a pumping pre-show playlist, some younger attendees take selfies together and videos of each other, presumably to share on their Insta story or BeReal. Minutes into Laura Lomas's punchy updating of Strindberg's Miss Julie, we see the pair of young women onstage doing exactly the same thing.
This is a Gen Z reinterpretation of the 1888 play, and the music, costume and staging all speak in (what seem to me) authentic voices of the modern setting. Having originally premièred in 2024 at the Chichester Festival Theatre, a new cast has been brought in for this touring version.
From the outset, the shifted perspective Lomas has adopted starts to reveal itself. Julie (Synnøve Karlsen) and Christine (Sesley Hope) are not mistress and maid, but old, close school-friends. Julie is preparing to celebrate her eighteenth birthday with a party to which she's invited "not many people—a hundred?" Her father is away, and the vast building is their own.
The one floor we see in Loren Elstein's excellent set design is the kitchen, complete with enormous island unit and sleek cupboards. The floor-to-ceiling windows and simple staircase to an offstage bedroom absolutely nail the ostentatious minimalism of the filthy rich.
In this adaptation, Jon (Tom Lewis) has just been employed as an intern by Julie's father, and he's on the up. He and Christine are in the early stages of a relationship, and he's rooting for her to get a place at Cambridge, where she's got an interview the following day. So the clock is ticking (literally, as a key element of the set design), and Jon is keen for Christine to leave the party, get to her digs for the night and rest up ahead of her big chance to escape. Jon, Christine and Julie have all known each other since early childhood, but more recently, they've moved in very different spheres.
So class—or, more accurately here, money—is still a significant factor in the play. Jon's mother was a cleaner for Julie's family as they grew up, and he (like Strindberg's Jean) would watch Julie longingly as a child. Also unchanged is the bitter balance of resentment and attraction felt between the two. But what is most striking about Lomas's take is the way that it places Christine, not Jon or Julie, in the centre and reframes the story more as one of young female friendship and betrayal than of power games and forbidden lust across the class divide.
Holly Race Roughan's direction populates and moves the stage with ease. She's supported by Scott Graham's movement direction, with an ensemble of seven partygoers invading the space from time to time, bringing a chaotic, hyperactive energy to the show. An almost constant soundtrack (along with the aforementioned clock) keeps the pulse of the piece going throughout its efficient sub-two-hour running time.
There are some design tricks and story interventions which I don't want to spoil here. I'm not sure how much one's experience of this show might be impacted by how well you know Miss Julie, but I feel as though the piece works equally well for those coming fresh as for those feeling sated by other recent versions. The dialogue is pacy and authentic without trying to crowbar in the voguish contemporary idioms that would instantly date the version.
The cast is excellent, though for me, Sesley Hope as Christine is the play's heart and gives a standout performance. An unexpected coda explores the fallout from the night. A vibrant, pulsating, sometimes haunting reimagining.