Creation’s new immersive show Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway went down a storm when it opened at The London Library this week, largely selling out, the ingenious way of allowing the audience to hear her innermost thoughts, and what the characters think of each other, through earphones, while the characters go about their business, a winning combination.
The idea came to theatre director and writer Helen Tennison when taking long walks during Covid while listening to a podcast of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, hearing what was going around in Mrs Dalloway’s head: “It was the perfect way to experience her inner monologue and relating to it. Because it’s all about what people are thinking on the inside and what they show on the outside, what the characters are thinking and feeling,” Helen says.
“And I wanted other people to experience that, for the audience to be able to hear the characters’ internal dialogue, the despair, joy, insecurity, self doubt and humour, and what they think of each other, on headphones, while the actors then show what happens on the outside.”
She pitched the idea to Helen Eastman at Creation who loved it and they went from there. And it timed perfectly with the 100 year anniversary of the publication of Mrs Dalloway, The Royal Society of Literature and The London Library coming on board for the June performances when the novel is set.
Opening in London this week and Oxford next, Helen says the audience’s response has been hugely gratifying: “One audience member said it was like walking into a book,” she says, “and there were big Virginia Woolf fans there and others who’d never read it, but they all took the same experience away. It’s worked very well, which is what we’d hoped for.”
Set in a warehouse in Oxford’s Park End Street in an old office space, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway runs from Thursday, in three parts; the first in Mrs Dalloway’s drawing room where she serves tea and cake to everyone (including the audience) and then takes everyone on a walk, bumping into Septimus Smith who is suffering with shell shock, mental health issues and depression, before returning home to host a party (with Pimms).
“It’s three distinct experiences in one, and really quite mesmerising and moving, but then we had such incredible material to work with,” Helen says.
“Because what’s incredible about the novel is the profound questions it asks, and the joy of being alive that it portrays. But more than that it’s the contradictions we find in ourselves, and our irreconcilable parts, that everyone can relate to. I think the audience finds it quite refreshing that our domestic moments are all being reflected back, that they’re normal, and that we all have an internal dialogue.
“So it’s been quite a journey, and on opening night I had to take a moment and think back to my Covid walks right through to the actual realisation of my idea. But as Mrs Dalloway said: “Moments like this are buds on the tree of life,” and I feel very fortunate and lucky that Creation has come on this journey with me.
But with only 60 tickets available for each performance, a short run from June 19-22, and tickets selling out fast, you’d better get your skates on. Book Virgina Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway here: https://creationtheatre.co.uk/show/dalloway/
