Miss Julie

The early life of August Strindberg's 1888 play Miss Julie was fraught with cancellations, protests, bannings. Reworked by Simon Stone (a man whose recent work has revelled in humans at their worst) and under Leticia Cácares' direction it is, somewhat surprisingly, not the most immediately confronting production. Stone has levelled the playing field between genders while maintaining the examination of class in a disturbing contemporary rewriting of Strindberg's play. In an otherwise slickly bare modern kitchen a large portrait of Julie (Taylor Ferguson in a phenomenal debut), a prominent politician's daughter, hangs on the wall – a sign of privilege, of status. With a driver/minder, Jean (Brendan Cowell) and personal chef (Blazey Best), this is her castle, but she sees it as a cage.

Left alone, she is drunk on her dad's red wine and power, and eager to experience a world different to her own. Having risen from a childhood of poverty and with a view of the elite from the peripheries, Jean is trying to climb higher still, and Cowell plays his fish-in-sheep's-clothing-out-of-water brilliantly. Conversely, Julie looks to swan dive from privilege while we are privy to the chaos that unfolds when ascent and descent meet midway. Shells hit the stage with terrifying realism, and Julie, having taken flight, clings to her cage underwing.