South African-born and internationally acclaimed director Yael Farber sets her explosive adaptation of Strindberg's classic Miss Julie in the remote, bleak beauty of the Eastern Cape Karoo. In a post-apartheid kitchen - a potent convergence point of domination, domestic practicality and untenable sadness - a single night, both brutal and tender, unfolds between a black farm labourer, the daughter of his "master", and the woman who has raised them both.
"Strindberg's Miss Julie once caused ripples in its own time and context," Farber said. "A contemporary reading of the original text struck me as rather toothless in the modern world. But its core seemed a powerful palette upon which to base a new script that uses the same device in order to expose the underbelly of the struggles that thrash about beneath the waters of our souls here."
The probing adaptation looks at a post-traumatic society and the knot of inheritances and legacies that entangle lives in the aftermath. Haunting and violent, intimate and epic, the struggles between the three individuals address issues of restitution and the reality of what can and cannot ever be recovered.
Mies Julie (18 SNLV) is at Cape Town's Baxter Theatre until 6 July. Tickets are available from Computicket. For more information, go to www.miesjulie.com.
