It's a Scandinavian midsummer eve and the atmosphere is sizzling with celebration and sexual tension. Emmerdale's Jeff Hordley appears at the top of the kitchen steps looking hot and bothered. "Offuh'ed," he mutters darkly.
Frank McGuinness's new translation of Strindberg's masterpiece, first heard at the Haymarket last year, is full of salty colloquialisms such as "Modesty my arse", but the meaning of this particular imprecation escapes me. "Offuh'ed," he barks again. "That Miss Joowlie. Completely offuh'ed." Then it dawns - what he's actually saying is that the lady of the house is off her head, only he announces it in the same way he might tell you that the Happy Mondays are fond of partying.
Once you've tuned in, it is actually quite good to hear Strindberg roughed up in a raw, Manchester accent. It gives Hordley's portrayal of the servant Jean a flash of danger often missing from more cultivated performances. Usually, after their urgent bout of below-stairs copulation, the roles of mistress and man-servant become ill-defined. Here, the status-gap is harshly exposed. Once Jean has taken an axe to Miss Julie's modesty and a meat-cleaver to her budgerigar, there is little doubt that she is dealing with an animal.
Anna Brecon's Julie is a pale model of porcelain delicacy, driven by some strange, pathological need to stand on her dignity in the same way that a lemming stands on the edge of a cliff. Her speeches throb with dream recollections of balancing on top of phallic symbols and longing to take the plunge.
Everything about Mark Babych's production seems finely gauged to make you wince. Patrick Connellan's steep, white-tiled set is part Scandanavian country kitchen, part laboratory for Miss Julie's ill-advised experiments in sexual chemistry.
Conrad Nelson adds screechy cello music to tweak the nerves further, with Tracey Moore contributing fine support as Kristin the cook, the one sane presence in the simmering kitchen. But this is not really a night for cool heads - nor one in which very much cooking gets done.
