Cast
- Countess Alice de Janzé
- Pernille Johansson
- Alice de Janzé’s maid, Christine
- Rebecca Langley
- Lord Erroll’s butler, Jean
- Michael Omoke
Production dossier · 2021 premiere
Miss Julie’s Happy Valley
A Kenyan reimagining of Strindberg through the scandal-haunted world of colonial Happy Valley.
Historical framing
Miss Julie’s Happy Valley reimagines August Strindberg’s classic through the scandal-haunted world of colonial Kenya’s “Happy Valley Set” — the circle of aristocrats whose lives of excess, privilege, and moral decay became legendary in the White Highlands between the 1920s and 1940s.
Written by Michael Omoke, the play transforms Strindberg’s tragic heroine into a portrait of Alice de Janzé: the American-born femme fatale whose name became inseparable from the era’s glamour, danger, and ruin. A notorious figure within Happy Valley, Alice de Janzé died by suicide in 1941, shortly after the murder of Lord Erroll — the set’s magnetic and unofficial ringleader.
His killing was never solved. Until now.
Scene I
The House
The production first establishes a world: table, kitchen, domestic service, and the haunted theatrical interior of colonial Happy Valley.
Scene II
Desire
Stillness breaks into proximity. Class, seduction, performance, and danger begin to collapse into one another.
Scene III
Pressure
The page widens beyond Julie and Jean. Kristine and the servant-world become witnesses, moral pressure, and counterforce.
Still sequence
Reel of tension
Scene IV
Rupture
The visual language turns colder. Blue-night distance, armed confrontation, and social disintegration replace the earlier seductions of the room.
Scene V
Aftermath
Collapse, intimacy, accusation, and death. The final movement is no longer social performance, but ruin.
Cast, team, and premiere details
Premiered at Folketeatret, Copenhagen on 26 August 2021.
Creative team
- Playwright
- Michael Omoke
- Consultant Director
- Anna Maria Blicher Skanborg
- Scenography & Costume Design
- Mia Fasmer Schønemann
- Production Manager
- Ida Marie Krog
- Sound Design
- Fredrik Hjulmand
- Lighting Design
- Lasse Søgaard Kristensen
Further credits
- PR & Marketing
- Emilie Bisgaard
- Director’s Assistant
- Eyja Sigriður Gunnlaugsdóttir
- Visual Development
- Aïcha Haidara and Elisha Ngoma
- Translator
- Eva Ferre Winkel
- Photographer
- Anis Dhiman
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