You won't be Missing Julie; and heckling Simon Amstell might mind

Alice Jones' Arts Diary

There’s something about Miss Julie. Two productions of Strindberg’s play will run concurrently in London this Spring.

The first to open will be Baxter Theatre Company’s Mies Julie, pictured above, set in post-apartheid South Africa, which transfers to the Riverside Studios having received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and off-Broadway.

A month later, Katie Mitchell will bring Fräulein Julie to the Barbican. The German-language co-production with Berlin’s Schaubuhne theatre will “re-imagine the play for the digital age” with film and will unfold from the point of view of the cook, Jean’s fiance.

It follows a French-language version, starring Juliette Binoche, which ran at the Barbican in September and will be the last production at the theatre before it closes for major refurbishment in May.

Mind the comedian

You get a more cerebral class of heckle at a Simon Amstell gig. At the end of a typically neurotic work-in-progress set last week, an audience member politely put his hand up and asked the stand-up, “Do you think you have a need to be needed?”

Amstell asked why he wanted to know. “I work in mental health”, replied the heckler. “And you’re my favourite case.” Touche.

Also in the arts diary

£10,000 in pound coins on stage at the Bush Theatre for MONEY the game show

Hooray for Glollywood? Glasgow Film Festival to screen Cloud Atlas preview