When a chat about a forthcoming play turns into an existential discussion you know you are in the presence of a pretty provocative play and, equally, a provocative actor or actress.

In this case, the play is Strindberg’s Miss Julie, as adapted by Frank McGuinness, and the actress is Catherine Walker, who plays the title role. Then again, no less a publication than The New York Times has said of Strindberg’s masterpiece, which was labelled ‘shocking’, ‘crude’, and ‘immoral’ when first performed roughly a century ago, that it is “an amazing play that still terrifies with its insoluble equation of sex, class and death”.
Sex, class and death? If those aren’t existential subjects, then what the hell is? But as a woman of the 21st century is there really anything that is terrifying, shocking or censorious in Miss Julie, as far as Catherine is concerned?
“It still terrifies me, in ways,” she responds. “Because it is dealing with themes that we will always grapple with. Such as the fundamentals of who we are, do we connect with people, what is love, what is sex? Since this play was written we have progressed in relation to, say, my character’s assertion of her sexuality but I think female sexuality is still misunderstood, still quite hidden and that we have prejudices about certain expressions of female sexuality. We experienced this last year when we did Blackbird and delved into that grey area of whether this was love or rape or paedophilia and because people didn’t find any answers to that in the play they found it deeply disturbing. But that’s the very reason I was attracted to that play and I’m attracted to this... So, to me sexuality, is still a grey area and that alone makes it fascinating to explore.”
Catherine pauses before continuing.
“Indeed, the fact that you and I are discussing these very questions in the context of Miss Julie proves to me that the issues it raises are truly universal,” she says. “Likewise the fact that I don’t have all the answers to these questions and while working through the play these are the very questions I am being forced to address for myself, as an actress. As we speak, I am only in week two of rehearsals and my head is aching with questions. Largely because there is no right answer for this play and I don’t know if I will ever have all the answers in terms of my character.”
For those readers who may be unfamiliar with Miss Julie let’s just say the premise of the play, as summarised in the press release, is that ‘It is Midsummer’s Eve… and Miss Julie has behaved rashly, and is about to commit an unthinkable act. As the night wears on… it becomes clear something terrible will happen.’ However Catherine, clearly a mercilessly self-analytical actress, makes these events sound more resonant than that.
“For me, we are trying to understand the extremity of this woman,” she says. “I feel she is quite manic depressive, quite lost. This is a woman who has had no love in her life at all and been deeply confused about her sex. Forget her sexuality! As in she is thinking, ‘I am man, I am woman.’ This is a woman who was brought up by her mother to be a boy and deny her femininity. That’s why it is, fundamentally, about trying to form your own identity, as in asking yourself, ‘Who the fuck am I?’ At one point she says ‘every thought I ever had I got from my father; every passion I ever felt I got from my mother’, so this play is all about who she is.”
And the fact that Miss Julie raises such questions makes it a play for all time, and maybe even more particularly for the post-modern age, a time when questions themselves have far more relevance than easy answers, Catherine Walker agrees.
“That’s exactly what I felt about Blackbird as well,” she asserts. “And plays that ask questions rather than offer pat answers are the kind of plays I am attracted to. And a lot of these plays do fall into dealing with one’s sexuality because that’s where we, in essence, define ourselves. But our sexuality also becomes a metaphor for questions about our core identity and in that sense, this too is why both the character of Miss Julie, and the play itself, are so fascinating to me.”

Miss Julie opens at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin on February 4