Sienna Miller bombs in Broadway debut

Sienna Miller has received a savaging from some of New York's most influential critics after her Broadway debut on Thursday night. Miller, 27, stars in Patrick Marber's new stage show After Miss Julie, a reworking of August Strindberg 1888 classic Miss Julie. In it Miller plays a rich young woman who falls for her father's valet, played by Jonny Lee Miller.

American Vogue editor Anna Wintour and playwright Sir David Hare were among those in the starry opening night audience to see Marber's play, which is now set in an English country house on the night of the Labour Party's landslide election victory in July 1945.

The New York Times critic Ben Brantley said that he had wanted to "root" for Miller in her first Broadway role. "She has always struck me as a game, gutsy kind of gal, as intrepid in choosing film roles (Factory Girl, Interview) as in courting (and wrestling with) the fame that now accompanies her like an unwanted bodyguard."

Unfortunately, Miller plays the conflicted and challenging role of Julie "like a novice at a piano" and often acts more like "a little girl pretending to be a grand lady", Brantley wrote. "Ms Miller registers as a healthy, sane young woman with good diction, good posture and great legs. Commendable as these attributes are, they are of limited use in portraying a tautly wound, death-courting neurotic who is eaten alive by her own demons."

The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout dismissed Miller as a "model turned second-tier movie star... all she does is stalk around the stage striking vampy poses.”

However Michael Kuchwara at the Associated Press called Miller's performance "compelling" while Bloomberg News described it as "convincing enough". Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones said Miller was "gutsy" and "eminently watchable".

The reviews come just four days after the New York Times apologised to Miller for labelling her promiscuous. In an interview that began with a rollcall of her former lovers it linked the actress to Sean Combs and the late Heath Ledger, both of whom were simply friends.

Meanwhile Jonny Lee Miller, also making his Broadway debut, fared better in the eyes of the critics. According to Brantley, the former Mr Angelina Jolie "begins the evening most promisingly.... If he never quite reaches the heights (or depths) of savagery to which Miss Julie is meant to provoke him, it's because Ms Miller (no relation) doesn’t provide him with an adversary worth knocking down."

Sienna Miller is performing at Manhattan's American Airlines theatre, just a block away from where her ex-boyfriend Jude Law is starring in Hamlet and near to where another ex, Daniel Craig, is performing alongside Hugh Jackman in A Steady Rain. In contrast to Miller, both Law and Craig have received excellent reviews for their performances. ·