Julie M is a modern translation of the Swedish playwright Strindberg’s European classic Miss Julie. I’ve never managed to see it previously despite its powerful reputation so I was very easily persuaded to nip along to Birmingham’s Crescent Theatre and am I glad I did.

Miss Julie is coupled in the public consciousness with Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (last seen in the midlands in Kim Gillespie’s sensational 2007 Lichfield Garrick production) not least because both plays are about women and end with suicide, but also because they were written only two years apart, in 1888 and 1890 respectively and reflect crucial issues of the late nineteenth century. If all this sounds like too much Scandinavian gloom, both dramatists wrote to correct what they saw as theatre’s sentimentality and refusal to address real social questions of the day.

I’m not clear about the minute differences between the labels naturalism and realism attached to these writers but I suspect we’d now dub both gritty realism, warts and all. In director Daniel Piaszczyk’s secure hands Julie M is far from being a dusty lecture on the history of ideas, spanking along at a cracking pace just right for a plot where sentimentality goes out the window in the very first scene.

Miss Julie’s an aristo with the hots for the lower classes, in this case the butler. Jade-Maria Cole plays her with real relish as a posh brat taking a cruel relish in bullying her social inferiors. Jim Kelly brings a storming power to the role of her soul-searching, victimised servant, but the real surprise comes when this spoilt woman gets her way and manages to seduce him. Now the tables turn and we see that despite their differing social levels the man comes out (literally) on top. It’s his turn to dictate terms in classic nineteenth century style as Miss Julie descends into romantic supplication and hysterical grief. Crikey! I won’t spoil the end for you, let’s just say there’s a gun and a knife involved and leave it at that.

Special mention must go to Katarzyna Kolowska’s assured and subtle portrayal of the beautiful French maidservant, a strong peasant realist in contrast to the effete Julie M.

This production is a must for anyone interested in theatre and the world of ideas. There are almost no new plays on in the midlands this autumn in fact almost no productions of anything other than the tiredest of old theatrical war-horses. Certainly nothing of the calibre of this drama. Has it really always got to be tribute acts, West End musical highlights and other thin tired fare? There is a saying, and I reckon it applies here. Use it, or lose it.