Although author Laura Lomas acknowledges The House Party is inspired by Strindberg’s Miss Julie, one can spot also aspects of Sally Rooney’s Normal People—a wealthy but emotionally scarred young woman forming a sexual relationship with the son of the family’s cleaner.
First staged in 2024, the theme of The House Party has become even more relevant as current international chaos shows the corrosive impact a self-obsessive individual can have upon a community. The self-destructive behaviour of teenager Julie (Synnøve Karlsen) suggests someone with a death-wish repeating past mistakes. Although the online appearance of naked photographs resulted in her having to leave her fee-paying private school and attend the state sector, she responds to her father cancelling their dinner plans for her 18th birthday by organising a party at the family’s extravagant townhouse on the Winter Solstice.
Julie’s need to be the centre of attention intimidates her friends into complying with her whims. Julie’s best friend / emotional crutch Christine (Sesley Hope) is so scared of messing up Julie’s plans, she is reluctant to reveal she has an interview for admission to Cambridge University the next day. The social and financial divide between Julie and her friends is apparent as Jon (Tom Lewis) is both interning as chauffeur for Julie’s father and is the son of her mother’s cleaner. As Christine’s boyfriend and designated driver, Jon intends to persuade her to leave the party at a reasonable hour, but when Julie is involved, things rarely go to plan.
Laura Lomas’s update subtly shifts the focus of the play from social class awareness towards mental health and emotional manipulation. Surprisingly, the most controversial revision is not the gory contemporary equivalent of Miss Julie’s pet bird being decapitated but an epilogue, set several years later, clarifying the fate of the characters.
The script is psychologically authentic. As a result of caring for her mother’s chronic pain symptoms, Christine is conditioned to put her own needs second and help others first. She is, therefore, a sitting duck for Julie’s needy manipulations and incapable of standing up for herself.
With a chip on his shoulder about his humble origins and low standard of education, Jon is a character who ought to attract audience sympathy. There is an excruciatingly embarrassing scene in which Julie reveals she has seen his job application form, corrects his spelling and mocks his choice of words. Yet Jon is also something of a brutal chancer who will take any opportunity to seduce a woman even if she is in an emotional state. There is a moment of low comedy when a distressed Christine realises Jon has misinterpreted how to help her cope with being upset and begun to undress.
Synnøve Karlsen brings an almost unbearable intensity to Julie. The opening scene with Karlsen spitting out nonsensical statements (Julie’s father is ‘literally’ a pederast and has committed incest by having a young mistress) in rapid-fire speech strains audience patience to the limit. Yet Karlsen is able to demonstrate Julie is damaged rather than simply self-obsessed and uncaring. It is hard to like, but possible to understand, the character.
Director Holly Race Roughan sets the emotionally intense performances against a sterile, chilly background. Loren Elstein’s gleaming set is convincingly expensive but looks more like a perfectly preserved museum than home to a family. The director makes excellent use of an ensemble (Ines Aresti, Oliver Baines, Cal Connor, Micah Corbin-Powell, Rachael Leonce, Jaheem Pinder and Jamie Randall) as the party guests.
Scott Graham’s movement direction brings a sensual quality to the slow motion dancing of the ensemble, but their later rapid, sliding, pointing, shouting, jumping movements are menacing and help build an atmosphere of potential violence. Without speaking, the ensemble convey the sense of a group of merciless vampires, willing to drink Julie’s booze but capable of sharing nude pictures of her online and blackening her character without remorse.
The House Party successfully updates a classic text and does so in a way that helps the audience understand characters that otherwise would be hard to like.