Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...In essence Scrantom and Green clearly decided to stay focused on Julie's actual reality — a nice, well-bred, rather brittle rich girl with a trust fund but no access to ready cash nor actual life experience. She is not so much a seductress as merely a naive young woman trying on seduction and seeing how it fits, probing whether a less boring moment of a very dull life may therewith ensue. So Julie here is far removed from the usual force of nature, progressively boring into the valet, John."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"..."After Miss Julie" is a shattering look at that destructive cocktail comprised of class warfare, sexual tension and power plays. Set on a lavish country estate immediately following the war - at the very moment the Labour Party triumphed over the Conservative Party led by Winston Churchill, the man who had just saved Britain - it homes in on Miss Julie (Maggie Scrantom), the restless daughter of the estate owner. Working and living on that estate are John (John Henry Roberts), the owner's longtime chauffeur and servant, and Christine (Anita Deely), John's earthy and adoring fiance of many years."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Fittingly, Marber’s Miss Julie seems tormented not by her degenerate "man hating," Strindberg's term, but by her lifelong idleness—without purpose or talent, her social order imperiled, she’s desperate to matter, and the only place she might is in the gaze of her father’s valet, John, who’s adored her since they were both children. In director Elly Green’s largely satisfying production for Strawdog Theatre, Maggie Scrantom combines Miss Julie’s paralyzing idleness with her knee-jerk gentility to produce a compelling, inscrutable, heartbreaking character who dominates the 90-minute show. As John, John Henry Roberts eschews his characteristically understated acting style in favor of broad brooding, but even off his game, Roberts is dynamic enough, and Green’s pacing taut enough, to keep the action driving credibly, inexorably toward the tragic ending."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Time-travel adaptations always raise nagging questions-could Julie's untimely executed pet canary gone to an RSPCA shelter, or a Malthusian League clinic have spared her free-thinking mother? Under the insightful direction of London expat Elly Green and dialect instructor Adam Goldstein, assisted by Mike Mroch and Jamie Karas's museum-accurate scenery, Maggie Scrantom's Julie transcends her persona's defensive superficiality to emerge a self-loathing nihilist in pursuit of her own destruction-a task she naturally expects somebody to do for her. John Henry Roberts, currently the go-to actor for haunted-veteran roles, delivers a likewise complex portrayal of a man trained to obey commands, even at his own peril. Finally, as played by Anita Deely ( and written by Marber ), the pragmatic Christine comes off as the most likely to survive in the new society to come. Never underestimate the quiet ones."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...But Marber's adaptation is otherwise almost entirely faithful to the histrionic original, beat for beat. Director Elly Green's cast commits to the material with intensity; there's real electricity between Maggie Scrantom's Julie and John Henry Roberts's John, and Anita Deely brings righteous fire to John's fellow servant and fiancee Christine, who finds the pair in flagrante delicto. But even they seem reluctant to embrace the most lurid elements of Marber after Strindberg."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Marber’s biggest change, besides the setting, is expanding John’s backstory to make him a combat veteran. Besides providing Roberts with a more mature character to work with, this also changes Julie’s interaction with him in the final scene, which in the original, involved a bizarre use of hypnosis (the most glaring example in Miss Julie of science aging badly). The scene is still strange in Green’s production, but gets a much better build-up, and the tension is so thick at that point, that any resolution is a relief. It’s hard to describe just based on the plot how quietly intense Miss Julie is; it’s an embodiment, written the year before Creditors (done expertly a few years ago at Remy Bumppo), of what Strindberg called the battle of the brains— when one personality must devour another, and then find itself without a source of further nourishment. Green has tapped into it fully, and all three actors are wonderful. While less otherworldly than something straight from Strindberg’s mind, this adaptation would do him proud."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...Much in the way that we can all agree that humans will never grow wings, there are characters in this play, on both sides of the have/have not divide, who consider the rise of the lower classes to be inconceivable. There is a great deal to unpack in After Miss Julie though the play itself never feels overly academic. While it may not resonate quite so profoundly on this side of the pond and the thematic comparison to the imminent loss of Strawdog's home space is perhaps a bit overstated, After Miss Julie is nevertheless a profound and moving homage to the endless battle between change and stasis."
Around The Town Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...It is not very often that I am somewhat disappointed in Strawdog Theatre Company's work. In fact, tonight was probably the first time in many years that I found one of their productions to be a bit hard to follow. Patrick Marber's "After Miss Julie" is a modern re-imaging of August Strindberg's classic. It is now set in 1945, after World War II and on this night, the Labour Party of England has "ousted" the Conservative Party and Winston Churchill. Thus, this three character, eighty-five minute play takes us into a class difference and the relationship between servant and "master" during a time of uncertainty."
Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended
"...This show is uncomfortable, and a glimpse into lives changing and out of control. You could feel the audience hoping these characters would make the “right” choices. As the play progresses, you realize you on the train, heading down the road, and the bridge is out. You are along for ride. A witness to these lives that are not content, not honest, and definitely not settled."
The Fourth Walsh - Highly Recommended
"...The battle of the sexes and the classes takes place on Mike Mroch's remarkable set. Mroch transforms Strawdog's stage into a multi-dimensional country estate kitchen. Windows look out onto the corridor to the servants' quarters. Just past the stove is the stairway to the family's rooms. And on the other side of the kitchen, the door to the outside opens onto a gravel path. The authentic look has an ordinariness that provides the perfect backdrop for drama to unfold. And it does! AFTER MISS JULIE pulls me into the provocative madness. And keeps me guessing what will happen next... right through the blackout."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Daringly drawn-out silences, filled with the compelling motions of smoking and the less compelling motions of kitchen clean-up, give the audience enough time to process the roller coaster of Miss Julie's tempestuousness. They also give the audience enough time to appreciate the period set design (Mike Mroch) and costume design (Brittany Dee Bodley). Ideally, in these drawn-out silences, you'll be wondering about the tipping points of our own moment (GOP identity crisis and how on earth it's going to play out next year, anyone?) and walking away from the theater, maybe you'll be inspired to attempt disentangling your own tipping point narrative from that of the nation's, even though John and Miss Julie ultimately fail to do so."