Laura Lomas
Chichester Festival Theatre/Headlong co-production, with Frantic Assembly
Tour: Leeds Playhouse and Rose Theatre, Kingston, with Bristol Old Vic
Leeds Playhouse
February 21-March 1, 2025; 90min, no interval
(also at HOME Manchester, March 25-29)
Let’s not spend spend too long considering the relationship between Strindberg’s Miss Julie and The House Party by Laura Lomas, which has opened at Leeds Playhouse ahead of a UK tour.
“THE HOUSE PARTY. After Miss Julie” it says on the programme sheet. The producers might just as well use one of those jokey phrases, common these days, for plays that take liberties with classic stories. This is Miss Julie (More or Less) or Miss Julie (Sort Of). It is not Miss Julie (End Of).
You would be hard-pushed to find the obvious surface parallels between The House Party and Miss Julie, though themes such as class, friendship, privilege, betrayal and even animal abuse are common to both.
What director Holly Race Roughan (Headlong’s artistic director) and the production team have on their side is youth. This is a Miss Julie for today’s generation, which takes place at Julie’s 18th birthday party, held for 100 or so people, in her absent father’s posh pad and against his wishes.
Julie is a spoilt rich girl teetering on the edge of calamity. For all the girly chats, selfies and tequila shots with best friend Christine, she’s clearly heading for emotional meltdown. The arrival at the party of Tom, charming but weak, and known to both women, precipitates a string of happenings that wrecks lives and friendships.
Three fresh faces get to grips with these complex young adults - Sesley Hope, first rate as Christine, as good a friend as you could hope to have, while Synnove Karlsen captures the unrelenting self-destruction of Julie’s poor little rich girl. Leeds-born actor Tom Lewis, in his Playhouse debut, walks the line between charm and male stupidity as Christine’s boyfriend, Jon.
The brilliant idea of the production is to employ as partygoers, between scenes, members of Frantic Assembly’s Ignite nationwide talent development programme for 16 to 24-year-olds, providing startlingly acrobatic flashes of dance and movement.
The only problem for me is the final scene, in which we find out what happened next to Julie, Christine and Tom. It seems like a bit of an afterthought and just doesn’t fit with what’s gone before - no matter how hard the two actresses try to make us interested. For me, the party was already over.
More info and tickets here
