PicksInSix Review: Miss Julie - Court Theatre

Trapped, Strindberg Style: Aristocratic Summer Solstice
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Sarah Frances Fiorello

It’s been a long, hard winter here in Chicago, but on the south side at Court Theatre it is currently the longest day of the year. August Strindberg's “Miss Julie” is encapsulated night after night at the turn of the 20th century and in the warmth of midsummer’s eve, for audiences to experience now through March 8th.

The play drops in on Julie’s servants, Jean and Kristine, discussing her wildish, reckless behavior during an otherwise garish (offstage) aristocratic summer solstice. Kristine respectfully heads to bed giving way for Julie and Jean to spend an evening jockeying for position, using status, sex, and social standing as levers to pull on each other to get what they want. The situation grows more dire and claustrophobic, as we slowly become privy to the inner workings of these characters—what haunts them, what moves them, and what traps them despite their agency and overwhelming desire to escape.

Mounting Strindberg in 2026 is an academic undertaking, one that requires care and attention to not only the spirit in which he created the work, but the implications that the piece—alongside Strindberg’s Naturalist theatre movement as a whole—had in the late 1800’s. Ironically, I was put at ease with this production's EDM overture, signaling an earnest understanding that Strindberg was allergic to a comfortable night at the theatre. It says, “Welcome to our psychological experiment, we hope you brought your thinking cap.”

Our three actors carry this play with poise and certainty. Kelvin Roston Jr. shines and makes it look easy as Jean, maneuvering between emotional heavy lifting and thinly veiled subtext, all while serving as a near constant presence on stage during this one hour and 40-minute one act.  Mi Kang as Miss Julie rises to the occasion without giving way to what could easily become a two-dimensional, misogynistic, overbaked fever pitch portrayal. She moves with nuance, allowing us to feel both sorry for her and disgusted by her, often at the same time. Rebecca Spence as Kristine delivers each line with surgical precision and dripping with intentionality, offering a master class in theatrical interpretation.

The creative team equally shines here. John Culbert’s stunning scenic design is as beautiful as it is claustrophobic, echoing the emotional notes of Strindberg’s writing. Raquel Adorno’s costume design is delicate and thoughtful while Abhi Shrestha’s dramaturgical work is a cornerstone to the foundation of “Miss Julie’s” resonance. All of this under the expert direction of Dr. Gabrielle Randle-Bent, whose fingerprint is over every inch of this production. No stranger to Court Theatre (directing “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Antigone,” and “The Island”), her scholarly understanding of the work and arresting theatrical storytelling style can be felt, transmuting as one within Culbert’s earthy, organic space.

Harry G. Carlson’s translation of “Miss Julie” does more than hold up at Court Theatre. You’ll be entertained, but that is hardly the point. The actors and creative team make this undertaking look effortless, doing all the requisite work to ensure that the 130-year-old play lands squarely in your lap, offering you a chance to think critically about the themes that are as relevant today as they were at the end of the 19th century.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | SARAH FRANCES FIORELLO is a graduate of Shenandoah Conservatory with a BFA in Music Theatre and a Chicago-based poet, writer, and performer. 
Instagram: @writtenbysarahfrances

PHOTO | Michael Brosilow

Court Theatre
presents
Miss Julie
Abelson Auditorium
5535 S. Ellis Ave
through March 8, 2026

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PicksInSix Review: The Dance of Death - Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Steppenwolf Steps Boldly Into Strindberg’s ‘Dance’
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Ronald Keaton

Now playing at Steppenwolf through March 22, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg's taut, visceral play “The Dance of Death” is a story of a power struggle within a long marriage, the emotional abuse it produces, and the influence of societal laws on personal relationships. And in a remarkable adaptation by the great Irishman Conor McPherson, it becomes more than just a dark comedy full of societal turmoil as molded from the grand hands of a Steppenwolf stalwart, director Yasen Peyankov.

There are three characters in this play, all filled with their angst. The story is about a married couple storming quite haphazardly toward their 25th wedding anniversary. They hate each other in brutal and ferocious ways. The husband, who is called Captain, is an artilleryman who rules his home with a military fervor of iron. His wife, Alice, is a former actress. They live in isolation on an island— it doesn't matter where it is. Their two children don't live with them, as their parents have methodically turned them against the other parent. The Captain is having heart problems and may not have long to live. Alice sometimes plays the piano as her husband dances a kind of bizarre sword pattern. As he dances, she hopes it might kill him, and he threatens to cut her out of his will. Enter Kurt, a distant cousin to Alice, and the man who introduced the couple to each other. Kurt has his own history about him. He's divorced and the courts have banned him from contact with his own children. Kurt has come to the island to, as he says, "find peace"... read: got religion. Both Captain and Alice have their own versions of Kurt's role in their beginnings. All three are doggedly distrusting of life and of each other.

Jeff Perry offers one of the most eccentric, unique comic performances imaginable as the dominating Captain. It's complex and challenging, almost Pythonesque. In these experienced hands, Captain is at once a full-on monster of a marriage partner, only to be self-denigrating and capricious in his authoritarian revealing of his own inferiority. With an ever-present mustache and brass-buttoned coat, Mr. Perry grabs us from his first entrance with a wild walk and interpretation that forces us to hold on in its creative joy. Thank you, costume designer Ana Kuzmanic.

Kathryn Erbe as Alice, the long-suffering yet dish-it-back wife, is also elegantly inflated in her opinion of herself. Alice has funneled her theatrical ways into her married life. So many of her responses, while just as withering, take on a sniper's mount. Ms. Erbe is simply marvelous in her expertise here. The entire relationship moves almost violently toward an obvious, modern comparison—Edward Albee and his George and Martha. Both couples can only express their hate and anger in such ways that somehow the codependency evolves into a strange kind of love. And unlike Martha, who lets it all go all the time, this Alice takes her shots carefully without much raising of the voice.

Alice and Kurt show a sexualized regard for each other, one that takes a bit of a side trip into aggressive behavior. Kurt (Cliff Chamberlain as a man seemingly unaware of his own weaknesses in character) is, at first, so innocent and righteous, dazzled by the emotional battle in front of him. Then he lets his guard down, expresses his long-dormant attraction to Alice, and realizes the predicament into which he has arrived. It all, of course, drives him out the door with the proclamation "You both deserve this hell you've created!" Mr. Chamberlain is both charming and powerful.

The monolithic castle the couple lives in was born from the fertile imagination of scenic designer Collette Pollard. Lee Fiskness creates a lighting design of wide variety, with subtle tones in the family battleground area combined with sharp, revealing shafts of light and shading. Ultimately, one might rightfully ask what makes such desecration of the human spirit so funny. In the knowing minds of both Mr. Strindberg and Mr. McPherson, we are held in total thrall by an excellent cast and crew that step so boldly toward such storytelling.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | RONALD KEATON received an Equity Jeff Award for the performance of his one-man show CHURCHILL. www.solochicagotheatre.org.  Coming soon, his new solo play about Ben Franklin, THE FIRST EMBASSY.

PHOTO|

Steppenwolf Theatre Company
presents
The Dance of Death
Downstairs Theater
1650 North Halsted Street
through March 22, 2026

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For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

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PicksInSix® is a registered trademark of Roxbury Road Creative, LLC