Mrs Dalloway | Storyhouse Chester

Virginia Woolf has always been considered a major figure in queer culture, and with herself being a bisexual woman in a time when there was still a major taboo surrounding being queer, it is no exaggeration to say that she was a pioneer within the LGBTQ+ community and their plight. So it undoubtedly seems apt that a new interpretation of her work falls into the queer theatre subgenre, with Olivier-winning trans actor Kit Green bringing her new work based on Woolf’s most groundbreaking of novels Mrs Dalloway to the stage at Chester Storyhouse, and what a wonderful tribute to the woman itself, in spite of its fairly muddled overall direction.

We open with some audience interaction and patter from Green herself, a vision of Clarissa Dalloway, complete with her most elegant attire done up to the nines. Warming us up as an audience and giving some much needed context and backstory, behind both the original story and the piece itself, she then proceeds to, in her own words, plunge us into the heart of the story of the titular upper-class society woman and party planner. The story is presented as a blend of spoken word, cinema and cabaret, creating a unique multi-genre work that almost feels like its own entity, certainly pushing the boundaries of what modern theatre can be.

The problem we have lies primarily in the fact that it relies on so many different types of media, and whilst elements of this are brilliantly executed, especially a couple of the music numbers to which we’re treated from the piano, something about it lacks flow or cohesiveness, and I’m not really sure it works as an overall piece. There’s no doubt that Green is a born performer, she has the audience on her side from the word go, and creates a marvellous sense of community, as she takes us on this journey, it just feels rather half baked and underdeveloped, as if the party was only half planned and she had forgotten to hire a handful the required staff.

Of course it is never easy to hold an audience in a solo show, in fact one could go as far as to say that it is one of the greatest challenges in theatre, so for this, Green must be given the highest praise. Where one is most at a disadvantage with this particular piece is through an unfamiliarity with Woolf’s body of work, and for the uninitiated, it is somewhat of a challenge to piece together the plot, or grasp onto how it is being interpreted. I must confess that, for a decent chunk of this play’s 90 minute or so total runtime, I felt somewhat lost in the woods, rather than fully engaged in the party and having a riot of a time.

All this aside though, there was something innately charming about Green, and how she was able to create such a wonderfully open, non-judgemental space, safe for all in attendance; we found ourselves being naturally drawn in by her natural charisma and stage presence, so when we as an audience were invited to actively participate, it never felt awkward or out of character. But what was achieved with the most success was the overriding atmosphere established whilst we were being guided through the story of Clarissa, her conservative minister husband, and the tragedy relating to one Septimus Smith that has deeply affected her during her latest soiree.

With all things considered, the main takeaway from this new interpretation of Woolf’s story is that the ideas and potential are there, and how it makes you feel, both the good and the bad, pays terrific tribute to the great woman herself; where it falls down is arguably in the lack of cohesion between the various elements in play as, with the best will in the world, the core of the primary storytelling, and presentation thereof, require further development to really give us the desired clarity of delivery.

Mrs Dalloway plays at the Storyhouse Chester until 06th June - tickets and more information can be found here.

★★★☆☆ (3*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review | Photography by Andrew AB