By Lilja Nassar, Second Year English
The provocative adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, The House Party certainly shocked and certainly delivered. But whether the message it delivered is what the playwright intended is up for debate. A microcosm for class, identity and power dynamics, The House Party explores the complexity of teenage interpersonal relationships and their interactions with socio-economic factors, all amalgamated at a fateful 18th birthday party. Featuring three protagonists, with Julie as the lead, the play delves into their disparate experiences as well as the one experience that unites them: the house party.
I appreciated the single set, the lavish kitchen/living room of Julie’s, as it was effective in naturally incorporating dance sequences and the movement of the party. I also immediately picked up on strong performances from all three actors; Sesley Hope as Christine, Tom Lewis as Jon, and Synnøve Karlsen as Julie, with Karlsen’s portrayal being perhaps the most impressive. Beyond these aspects I unfortunately found the play unfulfilling and its attempts to explore social injustices relying a bit too heavily on shock-factor.
The play begins with what seems like innocent enough preparation for an alcohol-fuelled, thrilling 18th birthday party of Julie’s. Julie and her best friend Christine are chatting about their predictions for the night, as well as their current problems (or should I say Julie’s). Julie’s attempted suicide, a dead pug – sorry, French Bulldog, as Julie would like you to call it, – a horrific prelude to a critical Cambridge interview, and an affair all unfold over the duration of the play.
However, any sympathy I gave Julie's character was due to Karlsen’s skilful acting; Julie's dialogue and actions individually provided none such reaction. Playwright Laura Lomas took on a big feat in her attempt to elicit sympathy for Julie in a play that ran only one and a half hours. Considering this, I did think the play was a moderate success.
Still, I couldn’t help noticing that many of the characters were rendered two-dimensional, acting more as caricatures of themselves with the occasional verbal interjections of their past trauma to excuse their behaviour. For me, this did not cut it: whatever happened to show, don’t tell?
Julie is clearly intended to be received as a nuanced character who defies stereotypical assumptions of wealth, that wealth renders an escape from other life stresses and traumatic experiences. This attempt, nonetheless, falls through. The traumas she has faced become progressively more absurd. This absurdity combined with the audience never catching a glimpse of any of the referenced events or Julie's reactions to them make it difficult to connect her present disregard for others with these traumas.
The extent of her self-absorption and destructive actions was personally too great for me to be able to see her trauma as an excuse. Especially when it only seemed to be brought up calculatedly in instances where she needed to defend her malicious actions. Namely Julie seems to weaponise her admittedly trauma-inducing experiences of being slut-shamed and reduced to her sexuality to excuse her sleeping with her ever-supporting best friend Christine’s boyfriend Jon at the party.
Admittedly, much of the dialogue was witty and funny, such as Julie’s exclamation ‘Parents are a social construct!’ While I could appreciate the humour, this did not bode well for Julie’s reception in the end. Clearly meant as a light-hearted comment, it still came off as a way of downplaying the severity of her actions by establishing her as a silly, mindless teenage girl who cannot digest 'big' philosophical principles and concepts.
Jon is not exempt from criticism either. Jon’s character seems to be built as a representation of the struggles of the working-class. However, his subsequent actions overshadow this characterisation with him seeming almost incel-like at points. Jon cheats on Christine with Julie, whom he refers to as a 'slut' and a 'whore' and verbally degrades.
Ultimately, where I’m meant to sympathise with Jon, I end up disgusted with his channelling of his frustration into covert misogyny. We find out in the lacklustre ending, set a couple of years post-party, that Christine had caught him 'staring' into her living room from outside in an attempt to repair his relationship with her after she found out he cheated.
Perhaps the play wanted to assert that these individuals are not necessarily culpable for their hurtful actions because of their own past experiences. I do find this somewhat difficult to buy though since Christine, the only innocent party, faces her own hardships yet manages to not intentionally hurt others as they have hurt her. It is Christine’s characterisation which affirms my view that Julie and Jon were not people to be sympathised with and the attempts at justifying their actions by tying it to their background were insufficient.
The House Party is running at Bristol Old Vic until the 3rd of May. For more information and tickets, visit Bristol Old Vic's website.
