By Harry Haun
23 Oct 2009

The male Miller was as delighted as the female Miller about making their mutual Broadway bows together, but he had to admit this was doing it the hard way. "The hardest thing is the concentration when you're negotiating the huge twists and turns that Patrick's play takes," he said. "You have to make these huge turns of thought and these huge turns of emotion in a very, very short space of time because of the pressure put on the characters. It's difficult to execute that — to find that, to find the truth in that and to make it believable to an audience so they can buy it."

He, for one, contended that his character had grown in the new translation. "I feel that John is an amazing character, to begin with, but I particularly love Patrick's version because of the war-veteran elements — the fact he's damaged goods much more, I think, than in Strindberg's version. He has this damaged element. Something went wrong with him over there. I like that. It makes him more vulnerable to me."

The star herself emerged from her 90-minute knockdown-dragout ordeal on stage looking daisy-fresh and drop-dead beautiful. That, she cracked to the press, was an illusion. "This role is massively draining," she said heavily, and then, sifting gears, she added, "but that's exhilarating for me. I love being exhausted by acting.

"I've wanted to be on Broadway for as long as I can remember, and, when Patrick Marber asks you to be in one of his plays, you say, 'Yes!' It was a no-brainer."

Her only previous stage experience was a slight brush with Shakespeare (Celia in As You Like It) in London's West End in 2005 — but she pulled out all the stops for Miss Julie. "I feel empathy for her in certain sections, and I understand — because of the research that I've done on my own — why she is the way that she is."

Her fashion statement was a Balmain mini-dress — a stylish mixture of tinsel and golden glitter, but with tatters that echoed the sexual roughhousing that the wearer had just experienced on stage. "It's quite a number," she had to admit. "Somebody picked it out for me."

It certainly perked up the press line. Once she had finished with interviews and photos, she pressed on to Espace, an elegant eatery (very) west on 42nd Street where she greeted well-wishers and dived into the penne and vegetables.

Heading the receiving line were Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Dancy, "old marrieds" of a month and a half. (She's Claire Danes, Roundabout's Eliza Doolittle.)

Paul Huntley, wigman extraordinaire, got the wig design credit on the program, but, truth to tell, Miller reverted to her own hair at the last moment. "The playwright took a dislike to it," Huntley explained. "She loved it."

Playwright David Hare arrived with wife Nicole Fahri and a dog-eared copy of the brand-new "Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told." Impulsively, he broke into a drive-by plug: "I've read it already, and I'm lending it to somebody else because everybody wants to read it."

"I didn't give you a very nice photograph — let's do it again," Jill Clayburgh purred persuasively to photographer Aubrey Reuben, who quickly obliged. She was with her son, the actor (Michael Rabe). Her daughter, the actor (Lily Rabe) was away in Oregon, for gosh sakes, making a movie.

Also: Rachel McAdams, legendary lyricist Sheldon Harnick, composer Charles Strouse (who got the great Bye Bye Birdie reviews) with wife Barbara, Byron Jennings and actress-wife Carolyn McCormick, Boyd Gaines and actress-wife Kathleen McNenny, director-designer Tony Walton, director-choreographer Rob Ashford, just-plain-directors Michael Greif and Gordon Edelstein, Betsy Aidem who is in Uma Thurman's "Motherhood" ("I'm in it, as much as you saw in the trailer," she dirt-kicked), Sam Rockwell , designer William Ivey Long, Patch Darragh and Heather Randall, looking great enough for two passes at the paparazzi.