Miss Julie And The Stronger: By August Strindberg. Adapted For The Stage With Additional Material By Robert Bethune.

There is no writer who shows the savagery of the heart with such honesty and agony as Strindberg. People acting from motives they themselves do not understand, who lie to themselves and others, who want one thing, and want the opposite of that thing; people who suffer from the profound ambiguity of the human soul--Strindberg is the master. Miss Julie is the master's finest work. There is no other portrait of people who love and hate in such an intense crucible. However, there is a flaw in the play: what happens in the bedroom? Strindberg draws a curtain across that key event and gives us a chorus of villagers instead. Why? I believe that in his Sweden, the play could not have been stageed any other way. He had to use the second half of the play to hint at the cause of the abrupt change in relationships. The challenge of this play: to go where Strindberg could not go and answer the question: what happened? This adaptation does that, and the answer is both surprising and convincing.