After Miss Julie

"Miss Julie," August Strindberg's 1888 Swedish play about a spoiled upper-class gal who impetuously seduces her manservant on Midsummer's Eve and suffers fatal consequences in return, is considered the world's first naturalistic tragedy. Even today, it stands up well as a compelling drama in which actions are dictated by outside forces.

"After Miss Julie," a slight variation on "Miss Julie" which its playwright, Patrick Marber, describes as "30 percent me, 70 percent Strindberg," resets the play to an English country house immediately before the Labour Party's landslide victory in the 1945 election, as the country's traditional class system was on the verge of change. Perhaps the producers sought to compare that historical moment to the recent election of Barack Obama.

While the plot remains exactly the same, Marber's play is a bit more psychologically driven and sexually explicit. But that is hardly enough for the play to merit a separate title. Frankly, it's a pretty pretentious choice. Are we now to expect productions of "After Hamlet"and "Before Hedda Gabler"?

Mark Brokaw's production features so many pauses that it makes the short play feel too long. Still, it benefits from a very realistic set design depicting a large, cluttered kitchen and a generally impressive three-member cast.

Tabloid starlet Sienna Miller, who is making her Broadway debut as the title character, enters the stage with aggressive sexual authority, enough to melt down any man who enters her path. But as the play progresses, her attempts to convey Julie's fragile emotions and sudden desperation feel forced and artificial.

Marin Ireland, who plays the working-class cook Christine, benefits from the fact that Marber has really fleshed out her character in comparison to the original play. Besides an awkward attempt at pulling off a thick English accent, her hard-hearted, no-nonsense performance works very well.

Johnny Lee Miller, as the male who completes the love triangle, convincingly alters between being a complacent chauffeur who knows his place in society and an aggressive dreamer ready to break free of it.

In any case, "After Miss Julie" is certainly a more respectable offering from the omnipresent Roundabout Theatre Company compared with its panned revival of "Bye Bye Birdie." So nice work, Roundabout, for not premiering such a terrible show this week!

American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St., 212-719-1300,roundabouttheatre.org. Through Dec. 6.