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After Miss Julie, With Sienna Miller in Scandalous Affair, Opens on Broadway
By Kenneth Jones
22 Oct 2009
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After Miss Julie star Sienna Miller
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| photo by Joan Marcus | Patrick Marber's three-character After Miss Julie, a new take on August Strindberg's famous 1888 play about class and relationships, opens on Broadway Oct. 22, with Sienna Miller in the title role.
The Roundabout Theatre Company production began Sept. 18 at the American Airlines Theatre on West 42nd Street.
Tony Award nominee Marin Ireland, stage and screen star Sienna Miller and Jonny Lee Miller star. Rich Miss Julie falls for her father's valet, and the mess is not easy to clean up.
According to Roundabout, After Miss Julie "transposes August Strindberg's 1888 play about sex and class to an English country house on the eve of Labour's historic landslide in 1945."
Sienna Miller ("Alfie," "Casanova," "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra") plays Miss Julie, Jonny Lee Miller (TV's "Eli Stone") is John, and Ireland — the recent star of Broadway's Reasons to be Pretty — is Christine in the American premiere of the play.
Roundabout, in association with Sonia Friedman Productions and Ostar Productions, presents the limited engagement of the drama, directed by Mark Brokaw, to Dec. 6.
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The one-act play, Miss Julie, is an early example of naturalism and is required reading for most beginning theatre students. Set in Norway, it concerns Julie, the daughter of a count, who has an affair with her father's valet. Their roles are altered by their sexual act, and plans are made for the future, yet they continue to struggle with their own passions and the expectations of those around them — with tragic results. The small-cast Swedish language play was thought to have its first Broadway performance in 1913. Its first performance was in 1889, the year after it was written.
The After Miss Julie design team includes Allen Moyer (sets), Michael Krass (costumes), Mark McCullough (lights) and David Van Tieghem (original music and sound).
The play was first staged in 2003 at London's Donmar Warehouse.
Marber, known for the play (and film) Closer, told Playbill magazine that his version is "much more a love story" and that Strindberg's strikes him as more a "battle of the sexes.... Mine is much more specific and possibly smaller and less elemental and, I think, in its way truer."
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Born in New York, Sienna Miller spent the majority of her childhood in London and Wiltshire. She went on to study drama at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. In 2000 she starred in the Off-Broadway production of Independence at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She portrayed Celia in the Young Vic's critically acclaimed production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, at the Wyndhams Theatre in London's West End. Upcoming movies to be released in March 2009 include "The Edge of Love" with Keira Knightly, directed by John Maybury and "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" opposite Peter Sarsgaard. She starred in the summer action film "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra." Her films include "Interview," the remake of "Alfie," "Casanova" and "Factory Girl," among others.
Jonny Lee Miller was seen on the big screen as a teenage computer genius opposite Angelina Jolie in Iain Softley's "Hackers." He came to international attention starring opposite Ewan MacGregor as the drug addicted punk Sick Boy in Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting." His film credits include "The Flying Scotsman," "Melinda And Melinda," "Afterglow," "Behind The Lines," "Mansfield Park" and "Plunkett & Maclean." Miller most recently co-starred with William Hurt and Chiwetel Ejiofer in the South African drama "Endgame," which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Miller starred for two seasons in the title role in the critically acclaimed ABC series "Eli Stone." His stage credits include Festen, The Play What I Wrote, Democracy, Four Knights In Knaresborough and Beautiful Thing. He also starred in a revival of Frank McGuinness' Someone Who'll Watch Over Me in London's West End.
Marin Ireland's Off-Broadway credits include Blasted (Soho Rep), Cyclone (Studio Dante, Obie), The Beebo Brinker Chronicles (4th Street, 37 Arts), Bad Jazz (the Play Company), The Ruby Sunrise (Public Theater), The Harlequin Studies (Signature), The Triple Happiness (Second Stage), Manuscript (Daryl Roth), Fighting Words (Underwood), Savannah Bay (Classic Stage), Where We're Born (Rattlestick), Sabina (Primary Stages), Far Away and Nocturne (both at New York Theatre Workshop).
Marber's first play Dealer's Choice opened at the National Theatre in February 1995. It received the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy and the Writer's Guild Award for Best West End Play. His second play, Closer, opened at the National Theatre, Cottesloe auditorium in May 1997. In October 1997 it transferred to the NT Lyttelton Theatre and then in March 1998 to the Lyric Theatre, London. The play opened on Broadway in March 1999. Closer received the 1997 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy, the Critics Circle Award for Best Play and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. The Broadway production won the 1999 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. There have been productions of Closer in more than a hundred cities across the world. Howard Katz opened at the National Theatre in June 2001. It received its New York premiere in March 2007 at the Laura Pels Theatre in the Roundabout Theatre. His most recent play is Don Juan in Soho, which opened at the Donmar Warehouse in November 2006.
Marber is currently working on a screenplay based on Ian McEwan's novel "Saturday."
Brokaw directed Lisa Loomer's play Distracted at Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre. His other past Roundabout productions include the 2006 production of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer with Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino and The Constant Wife at the American Airlines Theatre in 2004.
Ticket prices range from $66.50 to $111.50. Tickets are available by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212)719-1300, online at www.roundabouttheatre.org or at the American Airlines Box Office (227 West 42nd Street).
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Jonny Lee Miller and Marin Ireland in After Miss Julie
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| photo by Joan Marcus |
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