(seen at the afternoon performance on 24th January 2026)
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” A play, the title based on a New York subway station graffiti.
“Woolf Works” is more literal. Three short ballets based on work by the celebrated, tragic author.
The first, “I Now, I Then” takes 1925’s “Mrs Dalloway,” alternating between Clarissa preparing for a party and Septimus, preparing for psychiatric assessment.
Stunning wooden hoops revolve, as we play with time and location. Woolf’s voice opens the piece with “On Craftsmanship” as projections dissolve words and Natalia Osipova waits to make her first move.
We see her too as Older Clarissa, sometimes looking with regret, jealousy, even fear at Young Clarissa (Sae Maeda). Matching perfectly physical style, there is a deep sadness in the spring energy Maeda brings that her older self can never re-capture.
Marcelino Sambe in turn is a melancholy Septimus, facing what he must, the shadow of soldiers in his background.
Second piece, “Becomings” is more familiar to the monkey from the outstanding play adaptation of “Orlando.”
A tale of one person over 300 years, gender as fluid as history and meetings. Simple gold costuming indicates who they may be, lasers denoting time and division, spilling into the auditorium to emphasise the grid of interconnection.
Emotional and fast-moving, Max Richter’s score rising to the excitement this celebration of humanity requires.
It did make the monkey realise, with a startled thought, that should “Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope” ever make it to the stage (Jason Robert Brown workshopped a musical, apparently), it must be as a ballet on this stage. The only medium that could work.
Finally, “Tuesday” from “The Waves” is the most complex and moving of the trio. Natalia Osipova and William Bracewell play out the tragedy of a childless life.
Claire Calvert’s work as the sister who has children, is casual and unwitting torture. The young people (drawn from the Royal Ballet’s school teaching programmes) play, surround, and celebrate their mother. As children do, deserting an aunt.
Osipova is bereft. Her disciplined poise makes what is to come even more heartbreaking, as a stolid presence shatters.
Choreographer Wayne McGregor designs a visual explosion of the entire cast that is mental collapse made horrifically real.
By the time the sea claims Woolf, there is no further emotion to be wrung from the piece, we are sated on raw honesty crafted into movement.
Just like Woolf, her life, work and cohort in the Bloomsbury Group, this is timeless, challenging and full of complex ideas waiting to be discovered and dissected.
5 stars.