We rarely experience the original shock of the famous theatrical iconclasts.

I don't suppose pregnant women miscarry watching Aeschylus' "The Eumenidies," as they are said to have done in the fifth century B.C.E. Nor do we denounce Ibsen, Synge or Strindberg as bestial, loathsome, revolting and worse, as critics did in their day.

Of course, that early shock had to soften before a play's lasting value became clear. But the shock is still part of its intended meaning, so contemporary productions have to find a way to suggest it, beyond program essays about historical background.

This is what's missing from the adaptation of Strindberg's "Miss Julie" with which the new Phase 3 Productions makes its bow at the Brew House on the South Side. It's capable enough, like a very good college production, but it lacks the visceral transgression that is central to the story.

That story is about Julie, the high-strung, neurotic daughter of an aristocratic house, who dallies dangerously with one of her father's servants, John, who is ambitious to rise in the world but clear about what he can get away with.

It's all inchoate passion and rebellion in her, opportunistic calculation in him, although he is a bit of a peacock, too, and a pretty girl is a pretty girl. Both are scared by what they've done, but the tragedy is hers.

The third character is Christine, the cook, whom John more or less intends to marry. She is levelheaded, a sort of baseline of class-conscious prudence.

The original play also has a group of folk dancers, because this takes place on the longest day of the year, a festival of abandoned revelry called Midsommarafton in Sweden, where Strindberg's play is set.

Those dancers are necessarily (as is usual) represented here by recorded music.

But the Phase 3 production is an adaptation in that the play has been moved to rural Ireland. This Julie is part of the Anglo aristocracy, and John and Christine sport thick brogues.

Certainly some of the intoxicating reality of Swedish Midsommar is lost in the change, but the social stratification is roughly comparable.

I just don't feel the stakes are high enough in Julie's fall.

Alyssa Herzog's Julie is a skittish neurotic, which is good, but her focus wavers. Nicki Mazzocca's Christine is capable. The strongest performance is Terry Hoge's as John, but even he sets the stakes too low.

I imagine director Melissa Hill Grande is afraid of slipping into melodrama, but it isn't clear enough what makes this play so significant in theater history.

Dek Ingraham's set, featuring a wall of laundry to suggest the servants' quarters, hints also at the real stripping away that the play dramatizes.