Woolf Works: the Royal Ballet’s ‘dazzling’ production

Akane Takada as Rezia and Marcelino Sambé as Septimus in Woolf Works

‘Outstanding’: Akane Takada as Rezia and Marcelino Sambé as Septimus

(Image credit: Johan Persson)

“How do you capture the effect of one of the most groundbreaking novelists of all time?” said Rebecca Watson in the Financial Times. With the bar set “dauntingly high”, “Woolf Works” was “always going to have its work cut out”.

But choreographer Wayne McGregor “vividly” captures how it feels to read Virginia Woolf’s writing, injecting the ballet with a “charged quality” that draws you in. The show had its first run at London’s Royal Opera House back in 2015, and since then “I can’t stop going back”.

The three-act ballet is loosely based on three of Woolf’s books: “Mrs Dalloway”, “Orlando” and “The Waves”. McGregor “eschews straight narrative”, though, instead plunging us into “Woolf’s creative world” and examining her “obsessions and experience”. The music is a “vital part” of the show. Max Richter’s rich and varied score blends electronic sound with a live orchestra moving from “soaring poignancy to jaunty, offbeat observation”.

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It’s a “dazzling” production, said Teresa Guerreiro in The Times. There is something “almost painterly” about the staging thanks in part to Ravi Deepres’ “deeply evocative” film of “white words swirling onto the black front curtain”, and, later, a “slow moving monochrome” projection of the “rebellious sea”. Lucy Carter’s lighting offers “bright turquoise laser beams, occasionally tempered with a shaft of red”, which add to the drama of the second section. And while the choreography “doesn’t always inspire”, the dancers are “outstanding”.

“No one divides opinion quite like Wayne McGregor,” said Jenny Gilbert on The Arts Desk. “He’s the closest thing to Marmite on the ballet scene” and will either excite you with the “brave-new-world qualities of his work” or put you off entirely. He successfully portrays the “brittle, agitated world” of Clarissa Dalloway and the “existential angst” of the characters but those who like knowing “who’s who and what’s what” should probably steer clear of “Woolf Works”. “Even those who’ve read the novels are at no great advantage.”

Irenie Forshaw is the features editor at The Week, covering arts, culture and travel. She began her career in journalism at Leeds University, where she wrote for the student newspaper, The Gryphon, before working at The Guardian and The New Statesman Group. Irenie then became a senior writer at Elite Traveler, where she oversaw The Experts column.