Mrs Dalloway – Storyhouse, Chester

Adapted from the classic novel by Virginia Woolf, and directed by Jen Heyes, co-created with and starring Olivier Award-winning artist Kit Green, who effectively plays over a dozen demanding roles including Virginia Woolf herself.

Simon Kenny’s deceptively simplistic stage design, consisting of three huge projection screens, with a baby grand piano on one side, and a solitary green chair on the other, looks magnificent. The lighting by Phil Saunders creates a wonderfully cinematic atmosphere, working beautifully with the filmed sequences by Monika Koeck. This is part stage play, and part cabaret, with Green occasionally breaking character to address the audience as herself to comment on what we’ve just seen, and to prepare us for what’s to come. We are given performances of original songs by Green, who also plays piano, which is delivered beautifully and emotionally.

Before the house lights dip, Green appears in character as Mrs Dalloway, wandering along the front row of the audience to welcome us to her party. Throughout the play, the character of Dalloway’s downtrodden, acid-tongued housemaid often pops up to hilarious effect, a hybrid of EastEnders’ Dot Cotton and Catherine Tate’s Gran.

Green interacts with herself playing different characters on film, via an ingenious method involving front and back projection, including an additional smaller screen, that is smoothly rolled on and off the stage.

The story takes us through a single day, traversing both June 1923 – and the present. Repressed socialite Clarissa Dalloway ambles across London,  looking forward to her party, while shell-shocked war hero Septimus Smith desperately attempts to hold on to his rapidly unravelling sanity, plagued by horrific and traumatic memories. Their experiences follow a parallel track; mingling their vulnerable souls, and delicate physical and mental states.

Stunningly effective use of drama, original live music, audience participation ( at one point, volunteers are brought on stage to play party games with Clarissa!), create an emotionally uplifting immersive experience. Mixing the drama and intensity of Woolf’s novel, with an in-the-moment, gloriously involving, 1960s style ‘happening’, make for a simply enchanting and deeply moving evening.

Woolf and Green, as her onstage representative, asks us penetrating questions about our individual place in the world, and what it is that makes us who we are.

Kit Green is simply glorious, effectively seducing the audience, and powerfully portraying a woman gradually succumbing to entropy.  The stepping out of character sequences could so easily backfire, and risk undermining the gravity of the more sensitive scenes. But, Green’s sheer force of personality, charisma, and deep understanding of the issues raised within the performance, work perfectly. The finale is incredibly emotional, soul-piercingly poignant, yet simultaneously uplifting and glorious.

On a very warm, atmospheric summer’s evening in historic Chester, this is a truly astonishing theatrical experience.