UK Touring Theatre has produced a new translation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, a tale of passion between a valet and a count’s daughter written in 1888. This October, the company will be bringing their fresh take on this classic Swedish play to Cambridge as part of their autumn tour.

While there are several existing translations of Miss Julie, the company felt a new one was needed. “Though excellent, the [older] translations were often of their time,” said Felicity Rhys, the actress playing Julie and one of the company’s artistic directors. The new translation needed to be immediate and accessible, in the spirit of Strindberg’s original script.

With this in mind, Rhys and her fellow artistic director Adam Redmayne, who appears in the play as Jean, the valet, collaborated with director Denis Noonan to transform the text.

The company began its new translation of Miss Julie as part of Strindberg 2012, a celebration of Strindberg’s work held on the centenary of his death. The first step was to create a word-for-word translation. They then worked with the resulting text for almost eight months to produce the final script.

Using the literal translation as their starting point, they used improvisation to come up with the finished product. Rhys explained that this method was chosen as it incorporated the actors’ input into the script, and gave them “real ownership of the characters”. She added that this made the script more free-flowing and natural.

Miss Julie introduces two characters who are at war with themselves and their positions in life. Julie, whose strange behaviour makes her the subject of much gossip, has just left her fiancé. She is unable to face her family and ill at ease with members of her own class. Jean is an ambitious valet who dreams of owning his own inn. Loosely affianced to a servant named Christine, he is drawn to Julie although he knows that any connection with her has its risks.

Redmayne stresses that Strindberg’s play is best understood in the artistic and political context in which it was written. Miss Julie incorporates elements of the outgoing Victorian melodrama, as Julie careens from one emotion to the other in a manner that Rhys describes as “almost schizophrenic”, but also introduces touches of naturalism. A new genre when the play was written, naturalism attempts a convincing imitation of reality.  Characters from a wide range of social backgrounds use everyday discourse and undertake everyday tasks, all in a familiar setting, for example when Jean’s fiancée Christine appears behind the protagonists, working in a kitchen that includes real pots and pans rather than stage props.

In terms of political context, Strindberg inhabited a world where people were being forced to think about women’s rights and workers’ rights. These issues are clear in Miss Julie, as mistress and servant; man and woman test the power they have over each other. Julie has rank and wealth on her side, but her class and gender mean she has more to lose through her indiscreet behaviour.

Julie’s mother, who began life as the Count’s servant, attempted to teach her independence, and warned her not to allow herself to be dominated by men. However, in reality she lives in a man’s world, and a rich man’s world at that: the Count inspires a submissive and fearful attitude in both herself and Jean, despite the fact that he never appears onstage.

Rhys observes that the unequal status of Julie’s parents, as well as the contradictory values to which she has been exposed, make Julie unhappy and uncomfortable in her own class. She wishes to step down from the pedestal on which the servants place her, but reverts to her position as mistress of the house when she does not get what she wants. Jean’s feelings about Julie are just as inconsistent. As a woman of rank, her glamour enthrals him. He succumbs to her as a member of a higher class, yet he is also disdainful towards her because of her gender. The two engage in an unrelenting battle of wills as the Midsummer’s night trundles slowly towards its inevitable, tragic end.

Miss Julie will be on at the Mumford Theatre, Cambridge, on 7th October.