Famous as it is for its place in theatrical history, August Strindberg's powerful 1888 one-act drama of illicit passion, Miss Julie, is comparatively rarely performed and, when it is, is usually offered as part of a double bill, writes Chris Gray.

The last major production in Oxford, for instance, in tandem with Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy, was from the fledgling National Theatre in 1966 and starred Maggie Smith and Albert Finney - now there's a pairing - as the mixed-up young aristocrat of the title and the virile footman who enters into a disastrous sexual relationship with her at a Midsummer Night servants' dance.

Unsurprisingly, the level of high drama achieved by these consummate performers is not being delivered this week by Cressida Carr and Freddy Douglas in the touring production from Armstrong Arts, which can be seen until tomorrow at the Kenton Theatre, in Henley-on-Thames. Yet theirs are by no means negligible performances. They are notable especially for shrewd psychological insights about the compulsions at work on the pair of lovers.

These are by not just as simple as pure - or, rather, impure - lust, though this clearly has a role on both sides, as has been underlined in the company's advertising for the play which suggests, in a disagreeable 'come-on' manner, sexual content likely to titillate or shock. In fact what shocks, as ever with this play, is its chilling exposure of the unpleasant features of a rigid class system - its deleterious effects on the servants and the served - and the display of its writer's offensive misogyny.

Written during the collapse of Strindberg's first marriage, it contains much anti-female stuff, both from Miss Julie herself, who is seen to be in the grip of uncontrollable, unworthy passion, and from Jean, who sees himself as the victim of her wiles.

At times only, though. Sometimes he rants and kicks as the aggressor, the predator, a schemer with his eye on the main chance. Better, by far, a marriage to Miss Julie, if seems briefly possible, than to the homely cook Kristin (Vicky Hall) whom we encounter in the play's first moments keeling her pots amid the dizzying angles of Krisztina Vaszko's monochrome, Vorticist-style kitchen. It is these abrupt changes of mood in both the characters - the fascination of their vacillation - which makes this play, ably directed by Michael Armstrong, so compelling.

Performances start at 7.30pm. Tickets are available at the box office, telephone 020 73272 7110.