AFTER MISS JULIE opens at the American Airlines Theatre this Thursday, October 22nd.
New Yorker Magazine
The Talk Of The Town
October 26, 2009
The Rain In Spain
By Michael Schulman
Dear Etiquette Guy:
Help! I just married a tycoon and suddenly I have a houseful of servants to supervise. I am often uncertain how to behave toward them. There’s the maid, the groundskeeper, the wine steward— what’s a modern lady of the house to do?
-Anxious in Aspen
Dear Anxious:
Thank you for your letter. This is a more common problem than you might expect. I refer you to the case of Sienna Miller, the star of “After Miss Julie,” Patrick Marber’s adaptation of the August Strindberg classic. Playing the title character—a young aristocrat who has an affair with her chauffeur, in the nineteen-forties—Miss Miller faced this very dilemma. So the Roundabout hired an etiquette coach: Frank Ventura, who has consulted on manners for “The Way of the World” (set in 1700), “The Constant Wife” (1926), and “Top Girls” (1982), and who is serving as Miss Miller’s personal Emily Post.
“Etiquette is behavior between people that establishes a relationship,” Mr. Ventura said recently, during a post rehearsal discussion. “It sets the rules of the society.” For example: when Miss Julie enters her servants’ quarters, they know to drop everything and stand at attention. “Face her, maintain eye contact,” Marin Ireland, who plays the cook, explained. Domestics must also maintain the proper proximity. Say the cook was lighting her lady’s cigarette. “She would be striking the match away from her, so the flint wouldn’t shoot at her,” Mr. Ventura said. When pouring the lady a drink, the servant would turn his back, sparing her the sight of exertion. “More respectful, less familiar,” Miss Miller, who was wearing studded suede boots, explained.
That covers the servants but what about the lady? “She would have learned several languages,” Mr. Ventura said. “She would have understood the history of the country. She would understand economics. She would have been prepared at any moment to sit at a banquet and have a conversation with the gentleman on either side of her.”
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