Mies Julie | 4/5

SINGAPORE — It’s a powder keg of a relationship: A poor black man and the daughter of his rich white boss. And when it is consummated — steamy, graphic, raw — sex becomes the turning point in this bleak, explosive examination of post-Apartheid, 21st-century South African society.

Singapore Repertory Theatre brings to these shores the much raved-about production from Baxter Theatre Centre — writer-director Yael Farber’s modern take on Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie. It’s the night of the 20th anniversary of the end of the country’s brutal racial segregation policy and outside the farmhouse, the atmosphere is both celebratory and tense. It’s not much different inside: A drunk Julie teasingly tests her power over her childhood friend John, who happens to be her Boer father’s farmhand. The latter tries to ignore it, but the sexual tension between the two is electrifying.

“A storm is coming to this farm,” John warns early on in the play. And so it does — anger and lust sweep over the play as the two characters verbally wrestle with and intimidate each other, the upper hand swinging like a pendulum. Race, class and gender relations come together in a maelstrom of emotions. At the heart of it all is the unresolved issue that dehumanises: White colonials appropriating land from indigenous peoples.

Mies Julie is laden with symbolisms — from the anecdote of the farm owner’s dog who gets impregnated by the farmhand’s dog, to the tree stump over which the farmhouse is built (its roots still threatening to break through), to John shining his master’s boots over and over. But it’s the sheer visceral nature of the play, the dangerous chemistry between the leads, that anchors you. Both equally exude an animalistic aura: As the headstrong Julie, the beautiful Hilda Cronje oozes sensuality, while Bongile Mantsai as John is pure masculine power. Both are, in turns, naive, vulnerable and manipulative.

However, as forceful and unflinching as Mies Julie’s arguments are, they can also be very repetitive, particularly in the second half. Still, even as the two leads somehow slowly transform into two rather attractive debaters jousting, you have the presence of John’s mother Christine, played by Zoleka Helesi, to continue reminding us of very human stakes. Tragic tales stalk both John and Julie, but Christine’s silent, saint-like endurance is painful. Of all the symbolism in Mies Julie, the most potent for this reviewer is the anecdote of a black woman being unable to vote because her fingerprints — her literal identity card — have been rubbed out from all the scrubbing and cleaning of a house that is not hers, built over a land that is.

True, Mies Julie could perhaps have skipped some redundant exposition but it is one production that will continue to resonate loudly so long as the promise of the end of Apartheid has yet to be fulfilled and, with the Ferguson racial riots and Gaza debacle just two more high-profile incidents in recent months, we continue to witness social and economic injustice. Mayo Martin

Mies Julie runs until Sept 13, 8pm, DBS Arts Centre — Home Of SRT. Tickets from S$50 to S$70 at SISTIC. R18 (Some sexual content and nudity)