Alas, poor Vanessa Kirby. So superb as Princess Margaret in gilded Netflix hit The Crown, where she has captured to Bafta-winning perfection the playfulness and pathos of a royal caught between stifling duty, Sixties London and forbidden devotion, this should have been her big moment of status-enhanced theatrical triumph. She’s a shoo-in for Strindberg’s tragic, privileged anti-heroine Miss Julie, who fatefully descends below-stairs to lure Jean, her father’s chauffeur, away from the latter’s fiancée Kristina in a moment of reckless midsummer hedonism.
And in many ways, as she swigs vodka, puffs ciggies, snorts coke and tugs at your heartstrings with surprising force as the rich girl lost in...