Elise Kibler, Cassie Beck, and More to Star in Mies Julie and The Dance of Death

Classic Stage Company has announced the casts and creative teams for its new productions of two August Strindberg adaptations: Yaël Farber's Mies Julie, directed by Shariffa Ali; and Conor McPherson's new version of The Dance of Death, directed by Victoria Clark. Both will be presented in repertory, Mies Julie January 15-March 10, 2019; and The Dance of Death January 17-March 10, at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater at CSC.

Mies Julie will star Elise Kibler (The Heidi Chronicles), James Udom (The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd), and Patrice Johnson Chevannes (The Crucible). The creative team will include David L. Arsenault (scenic design), Ntokozo Fuzunina Kunene and Andrew Moerdyk (costume design), Stacey Derosier (lighting design), Quentin Chiappetta (sound design), and Andrew Orkin (composer).

The Dance of Death will star Cassie Beck (The Humans), Richard Topol (Indecent), and Christopher Innvar (The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess). The creative team will include Arsenault (scenic design), Tricia Barsamian (costumes), Derosier (lighting design), Chiappetta (sound design), and Jeff Blumenkrantz (composer).

Mies Julie, Farber's adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie, according to a press release, "resets the classic play to a farmhouse in the Karoo of South Africa on the evening of the annual Freedom Day celebration. When the white Afrikaans landowner's daughter, Julie, falls for her father's charismatic Xhosa farm laborer, John, their erotic evening together erupts into a brutal battle fueled by gender, race, power, and ancestral domain."

In The Dance of Death, "a retired military man, Edgar, and his wife, Alice, a former actress, have given up on any semblance of civility toward each other at the threshold of their 25th wedding anniversary. Once urbanites immersed in Copenhagen's cultural life, they now live in relative isolation — from their children, from the rest of society — on a remote island, where they have become as codependent as they are hateful. Seething with cruelty, and punctuated by absurdity and humor, Strindberg's electrifying play, written in 1900, was ages ahead of its time in its bleak examination of marriage."