It would seem that August Strindberg’s daring 1888 psychological drama Miss Julie, about an illicit, destructive, doomed love between a
male servant and his master’s daughter-in a social world built around
knowing one’s place-would transpose perfectly to apartheid-era South
Africa. Injecting a particularly brutal expression of state-sanctioned
antiblack animus into Strindberg’s cutting tale of class, gender, and
psychological trauma would surely bring the venerated but to contemporary
tastes melodramatic chestnut screaming to life.
A moment like this reveals the real power of Farber’s setting the play when
she does. Had the story unfolded when apartheid was in place, she’d have
given her audience an easy out: Mies Julie’s careless, entitled
condescension toward John, and John’s simultaneous contempt and adoration
of Mies Julie, are symptoms of a now-outlawed system, and the play becomes
a historical diorama. But Farber illustrates a far more disturbing reality:
the legacy of colonialism extends its toxic tendrils so deeply into every
social structure that it can’t be excised by legislative decree. When it
comes to restoring humanity to people dehumanized for centuries, 20 years
is hardly enough time for even a first step.
