Review: The House Party, Bristol Old Vic – ‘An exciting vibrant and fizzing play with a curiously unsatisfying finale’

August Strindberg’s play Miss Julie is bound up with issues around class and sexuality, all wrapped up in a search for a more natural way of presenting real lives and the drama within them.

Directed by Headlong’s artistic director Holly Race Roughan, Laura Lomas explores those same themes through a modern lens in this adapted version.

We open on Oren Elstein’s super sharp luxurious set, all polished marble, walk-in fridge, and expansive levels of smoked glass. The numbers of a large digital clock click away over the kitchen counter.

It is just past nine o’clock and Julie (Synnøve Karlsen) is impatient to enjoy her 18th birthday party. She is enjoying her privilege, displaying a teenage confidence that she knows everything there is to know about life. Her dad has let her down by not taking her out to dinner, preferring to be with his new girlfriend, only six years older than Julie.

Julie’s best friend Christine (Sesley Hope) has a much older head on her teenage shoulders. She is preparing to go to Cambridge the following day with her boyfriend Jon (Tom Lewis) for what promises to be a formality before her acceptance into university.

As the shots get sunk, we hear that Jon’s mum used to clean for Julie’s parents and that he now works as an intern for her high-flying dad. And Christine and Jon have found love.

What follows over the next 90 minutes is an intense exploration of destruction, gender imbalance and recrimination. Along the way, the party guests arrive, in the guise of Frantic Assembly’s physical theatre ensemble. The music is loud, very loud, and the movement director Scott Graham injects wild frenetic dance scenes suggesting hedonistic escapism around the corner.

There are echoes of both Sally Rooney’s Normal People and the recent Netflix series Adolescence as the three main protagonists deal with confused motives, shared sexual video content and the different attitudes towards male and female promiscuity.

Karlsen perfectly captures the little rich girl lost, all knowing but ultimately clueless about the direction she is taking. Lewis’s Jon is more stereotyped. He is northern, working class, seething with injustices and determined to rise in the world. Hope’s Christine, more rooted and sensible, balances her own dreams with caring for her sick mum and protecting boyfriend Jon. This authenticity will put her in danger when Julie goes off the rails.

The House Party works best when ratcheting up the tension, revealing secrets bit by bit. There are shocks to come, and at times it is hard not to look away at the car crash played out in front of you.

The last 10 minutes, however, are disappointing. What seems like a hugely superfluous scene not only kills the momentum, sapping the energy from the piece, but makes the mistake of spelling out what happened, rather than allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions.

This is an exciting, vibrant and fizzing play, let down by a curiously unsatisfying finale.

The House Party is at Bristol Old Vic from April 23-May 3 at 7.30pm, with additional 2.20pm matinee shows on Thursday and Saturday (no shows Sunday), and an early performance (at 6.30pm) on April 28.

There will be a post-show Q&A with members of the cast after the matinee show on May 1. Tickets to all shows are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.

All photos: Ikin Yum

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