Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...The work is barely 75 minutes. That's long enough to be with these all-consuming characters, and to vicariously experience their eroticized choices from which there can be no escape. But the reason to suffer and feel alongside this ill-fated pair as they pace around Kurtis Boetcher's set, Raquel Adorno's revealing costumes signaling their ultimate fates, is to just a little better understand both the overwhelming force of desire, and its constant collision with inequality and hate."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...It's the explosive parts that director Dexter Bullard captures particularly well, as he has done since bursting onto the scene 28 years ago with his hypersweaty Bouncers at Evanston's Next Theatre. This Victory Gardens production pulls no punches; a trigger-warning list for this show would span several pages. The ferocious cast, which includes Heather Chrisler as Mies Julie and Jalen Gilbert as John, meet Bullard's and Farber's every demand. The patches of melodrama are perhaps the unavoidable price for taking the playwright's words so earnestly to heart."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Chrisler and Gilbert go for broke here, but Bullard's staging allows fleeting moments of tenderness, with Farber's script weaving in broken poetic interludes about the dusty land around them. Black snakelike roots encircle Kurtis Boetcher's set, suggesting just how difficult it is to break through the entangled bloody history of racism and colonialism."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...Yes, it’s Mies Julie, not Miss Julie, and it’s by Yaël Farber, not August Strindberg. And that makes a monstrous difference. Repurposed to depict a different divergence between two star-crossed and mismatched lovers, reset in an uprooted country torn between the curse of apartheid and the uncertainty of nationhood, Strindberg’s drama scorches and sears in a bold new way. But, as in 1888, audiences inevitably seek a point to the pain: We need to know that this savage sexual encounter is more than just the world’s worst one-night stand."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Highly Recommended
"...Farber, a Helen Hayes Award winner for Outstanding Director of a Play, brings a new political element to the classic, fleshing out more fully the contemporary issues of human rights, race, power, and gender power through the lens of post-apartheid South Africa."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Challenge is something that Victory Gardens Theater has never run away from. Even scripts that “smack ” you in the face, or that make you “wince” are often shown on their stage. Their current production, probably one of the shortest plays to be witnessed on this sage, “Mies Julie”, a 72 minute adaptation of August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” by Yael Farber."
WTTW - Highly Recommended
"...To cut to the chase: “Mies Julie,” Yael Farber’s blistering contemporary South African version of “Miss Julie,” the 1888 August Strindberg classic, is far and away the most brilliant play to arrive on a Chicago stage this season. And its production by Victory Gardens Theater – explosively directed by Dexter Bullard, and featuring four spellbinding performances – is guaranteed to leave you gasping for breath. It is that good. (And be advised: It is not for the meek.)"
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Recommended
"...“Mies Julie” scores points for its intensity and its exploration of challenging problems of power, gender, and the iron grip of history on a society. An interesting discussion could be made of the contrasting racial contexts in South Africa and the United States. The suddenly volcanic coupling between Julie and John, the core of the narrative, doesn’t work for me. But Chrisler and Gilbert sure do give it their all."
Third Coast Review - Recommended
"...Bullard’s direction keeps this 75-minute story in motion. The cast is strong, especially the relationship between Chrisler and Gilbert, where the power shifts between her whiteness and his masculinity keep the story in balance until its tragic end. Williams is excellent in portraying Christine."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Mies Julie may be short, but it is a heightened, concentrated kind of shortness. You’ll know you’ve experienced something extraordinary when it is finished and you remember how to breathe again. One of the most intense shows of the year, it’s also one of the best."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...In lesser hands than those of Director Dexter Bullard, the considerable emotional wallop of Mies Julie might have been diluted. The acting struck this writer as flawless-including the accents that by play's end seems as familiar as the inflections of our next door neighbors. T. Ayo Alston as the ancestor white-faced ghost playing an amp'd African thumb piano adds an elegiac soundscape that presages the lingering way this story haunts you well after the curtain bow."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Given its themes and contents (Victory Gardens would be advised to add "graphic violence" to their website and pre-show materials), "Mies Julie" is a work of significant risk. It has already succeeded in artistic excellence. To prevail financially it will require audiences who are unafraid of conflict and discomfort as well as critics willing to encourage them. I believe this city has both."