October 23, 2009

'After Miss Julie' reviews not as bad as you might think

“After Miss Julie” opened on Broadway last night, a spectacle writ large due to tabloid-bait Sienna Miller. The reviews — which are literally all over the map — may say as much about the state of our celebrity-obsessed, Schadenfreude-snarfing culture and the arts’ and media’s unwary dependence on it.

The New York Daily News calls the play’s lead character “one seriously hot mess” but frankly, almost none of the reviewers say the same about Miller’s acting. True, some say she’s in over her head in a difficult role, but several legit reviewers have some very nice things to say about her. It’s hardly as bad as you might conclude after seeing the supposed review roundups in People (“Broadway Critics Applaud Sienna Miller – for Her Looks”) or England’s picture-heavy Daily Mail (“Nice legs, shame about the acting! Sienna Miller gets Broadway bashing.”)

This Roundabout Theater Company production of “After Miss Julie” is penned by Patrick Marber based on August Strindberg’s original. Moved to post-WWII England, it’s still about race and class, but sexed up. Miller plays the entitled Miss Julie who seduces her daddy’s driver, played by Jonny Lee Miller. They both make their Broadway debuts in this production. The cast is rounded out by Marin Ireland. Mark Brokaw directs.

“After Miss Julie” plays through Dec. 6 at the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42 St., map. Regular tickets are priced from $66.50 to $111.50.

Playbill lists the show as appropriate only for mature audiences.

The “After Miss Julie” Broadway reviews:

New York Times - “Playing the title role in Mr. Marber’s adaptation of ‘Miss Julie,’ August Strindberg’s love-and-death shocker from 1888, Ms. Miller registers as a healthy, sane young woman with good diction, good posture and great legs. Commendable as these attributes are, they are of limited use in portraying a tautly wound, death-courting neurotic who is eaten alive by her own demons.”

Daily News - “Miller, making her Broadway debut, is improbably beautiful, every inch the ‘fine-looking filly’ John calls her. She’s committed and competent, but her performance is a shade monochromatic, not modulated enough to make Miss Julie’s jagged edges sharp.”

Variety - “Sienna Miller looks smashing as the wayward aristocrat, but this is a complex character fraught with contradictions, and she comes off simply as a loony tart whose cat-and-mouse games careen out of control.”

Associated Press - “And there is a relentless quality to Sienna Miller’s performance, not terribly subtle or vulnerable, but compelling in its obsessiveness.”

Wall Street Journal - “I almost felt sorry for her, but the truth is that she has no more business playing a classic stage role than I have posing for the cover of Vogue. The Roundabout Theatre Company should be ashamed of itself for asking her to do so.”

NY1 - “And Sienna Miller may benefit from low expectations, but she’s a precise and emotionally raw Miss Julie. Yes, she has movie-star glamour, but Miller doesn’t rest on her curvaceous laurels. She goes on a harrowing journey that ends in tragic despair.”

Post - “It’s this fear — or inability — of making the two leads as unhinged or as odious as they need to be that keeps ‘After Miss Julie’ from taking off.”

Bloomberg - “The show, which opened last night on Broadway, features increased sexuality, violence and vulgarity. Even allowing for a persuasive performance by Sienna Miller, it is certainly no improvement on the original.”

USA Today - “As her personal background is revealed, Miller makes her desperation and desire palpable. She’s at once willful and confused, sad and irritating. It is, for all its surface bravado — Miller speaks loudly and crisply, almost spitting out her lines at times — a nuanced performance.”

Hollywood Reporter - “Jonny Lee Miller, also making his first stateside stage appearance, superbly conveys his character’s complex mixture of macho bravado, well-honed courtliness and underlying vulnerability. And Ireland, so powerful in last season’s “reasons to be pretty,” tackles the expanded role of Christine with a similarly impressive ferocity.”

Newsday - “More mysterious than either character’s motive is the reason for Marber’s adaptation - which, despite the misleading title, is not a sequel to the Strindberg but an unnecessary new version.”

Chicago Tribune - “And while it does not wholly sustain all of its rhythms or ambitions, Mark Brokaw’s production of this savvy updating of the naturalistic classic is quite the smart, sexy and stimulating show. “

New York magazine - “They humiliate and degrade one another, practically searing brands into each other’s skin. In doing so, they (and Marber) stress one truth Strindberg didn’t: that the counterbalance of misogyny is male self-loathing. Jonny Lee Miller, as John, understands this. …”

Telegraph - “Sienna Miller and Johnny Lee Miller fail to generate convincing chemistry in Patrick Marber’s re-imagining of August Strindberg’s ‘Miss Julie.’”

Image source: Roundabout Theater Company official website for “After Miss Julie.”

Earlier: Reviews: ‘Oleanna’ on Broadway with Pullman, Stiles
Review roundup for Jude Law’s ‘Hamlet’ on Broadway
Carrie Fisher’s ‘Wishful Drinking’ draws mixed reviews
Mixed reviews of ‘A Steady Rain’ laud Craig, Jackman

October 23, 2009 7:20 AM in Broadway, Midtown

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