EDGE on the Net

I have no objection to celebrity casting on Broadway. Daniel Craig’s double 00 blood is simmering next to a howling Hugh Jackman in A Steady Rain, and Julia Stiles has proven to be a natural power player in David Mamet’s Oleanna. All three stars have movie-star clout to back up their marquee value, and, lucky for us, they all deliver the goods.

What I do object to is bad casting. Enter Sienna Miller in Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie, at the American Airlines Theatre. Miller’s made a name for herself in films like "Factory Girl," and is very attractive to boot. However, if Director Mark Brokaw truly thought Miller was a good choice for the aristocratic, doomed lover in an updated version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, then he was an even worse choice to direct the play.

After Miss Julie’s a tough nut to crack. Updated to 1945 London (the night of the British Labour Party’s election victory), and told in 90 minutes, the play runs the gamut of the title character’s dalliance with a servant, John (Jonny Lee Miller), to her cat-and-mouse power struggles after their fall, to the struggles between rich and poor, freedom and servility. While John and his class-worthy servant fiancée, Christine (Marin Ireland), are grounded in their station, Julie’s the catalyst for disaster.

Enter the problems. Sienna Miller plays Julie on one level throughout (loud and affected), so each transition is lost. Whether seducing John or scolding John or playing victim to John, the internalization never switches gears. You don’t know what her motivation is (to her credit, you can hear her every word), so any lessons from either Marber or Strindberg will have to be gleaned from your own knowledge of the work.

Brokaw handles some long silences well (and there are quite a few), but the periodic passion fits or fights between Julie and John are so clumsily executed they verge on parody. The sprawling kitchen set by Allen Moyer is a charmer; whether it’s too large for the play’s scope is another matter. Actors talk across the room (or long table) throughout, at times adding emotional distance, at other times blocking it. No such contradictions are in Mark McCullough’s fiery lighting, peering in through windows and doorways and pinpointing each scene’s intended mood.

After Miss Julie’s supporting characters have a few fraught scenes, and here you’ll listen. Ireland’s rich in quiet, allowing her tension to rise behind the lines. When this actress suffers, there, too, it’s as if she’s fighting against the long silences and longer stage crosses.

Jonny Lee Miller’s outstanding. He never drops his ingrained, lower-class manners, even when professing a desire to be free of his station, or when indulging Julie. The beauty of such a performance is the quiet desperation we don’t hear in every plea or act of submission. Many people know this Miller from his TV work as the title character of "Eli Stone," and he, like Sienna, is making his Broadway debut. For one Miller onstage, enter star casting.

After Miss Julie continues through December 6 at the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd Street. For more information visit the Roudabout Theatre Company website.