It must be time for revisiting the classics at downstairs Belvoir Street. Playing at the moment is a production by Latvian director Vladislav Nastavshevs of the classic Strindberg play ‘Miss Julie’ and next up there’s a producton of Frank Wedekind’s classic turn of the twentieth century play, ‘Spring Awakening’.

Strindberg’s classic play happens at a crisis point for its two main characters, the Count’s daughter, Miss Julie and Jean, the Count’s live-in valet. In the midst of Midsummer Eve celebrations at the Count’s manor house, Miss Julie and Jean, have a torrid erotic encounter. All of a sudden their worlds have turned upside down.

Both Miss Julie and Jean have a strong sense of their place in the world, where they belong and where they don’t. For Miss Julie it is to mix with the privilged, for Jean it is the servants quarters he shares with his fiance, Christine. In both their hearts, they don’t know how they could let their worlds be contaminated with the world of the other…

Nastavshevs’s production is a strong, evocative Miss Julie. She really grasps the play’s nettle, and the production captures some great moments, which is what the theatre experiece is all about.