VIRGINIA WOOLF'S GOOFY PLAY

Given the surfeit of interest in all things Virginia Woolf, it's hard to believe that "Freshwater", Woolf's sole play, only enjoyed its professional New York debut this month. Begun as a diversion from the writing of "Mrs Dalloway", the play affectionately teases the Bloomsbury group's Victorian antecedents. It was staged only once in Woolf's lifetime, at a birthday party in honour of Woolf's 16-year-old niece, Angelica Bell, in 1935. (Angelica, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Leonard's marmoset, Mitzi, all starred.)

Set in the mid 1870s, "Freshwater" takes place on the eponymous bay of the scenic Isle of Wight, where Virginia's maternal great-aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, an influential British photographer, owned a home from 1860 to 1875. The Isle of Wight was the Victorian equivalent of the Hamptons and Freshwater itself was the locus for a range of Victorian luminaries.

"Freshwater" by Virginia Woolf The play doesn't quite stand the test of time, particularly if you were spared long childhood visits with old people at tea-time. But it's still fun--as a historical document and another intriguing fragment of Woolf's staggering mind. Anne Bogart, the visionary theatre director at the helm of the SITI Company, retains the play's whimsy --a quality Woolf was known to admire in her high-spirited aunt. The cast looks like it's enjoying itself, and the vibrant set glows with the lemony green of the English seaside at summertime.

The play opens with Julia Margaret Cameron and her lawyer husband, Charles Cameron, awaiting the arrival of their coffins. They plan to fill them with personal belongings and bring them to India, where they intend to see out their last days. Ellen Terry, a Victorian actress who would later be praised by the Times as “the uncrowned Queen of England”, is depicted here as a 16-year-old glumly posing for George Frederick Watts, her 47-year-old painter husband. He obsessively repositions her for a portrait of Modesty. Lord Alfred Tennyson is also here, distractedly reciting passages from "Maud".

The drama unfolds on the beach later that day, when Ellen pledges to leave the fusty, abstracted Watts for a handsome young sailor. They conspire to enjoy a life of modern pleasures in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, and Ellen returns to the house--this time clad in trousers--to declare her intentions to her husband and his eminent Victorian friends. For the play's close, Queen Victoria (played by a man in drag--a crowd pleaser irregardless of century) bestows peerages on both Tennyson and Watts. It all must've felt so old and quaint even in the 1930s.

The play was originally staged at a difficult time for Woolf, soon after her dear friend Roger Fry had died. So it's best to accept this spritz of a play on similar terms: as a wilful attempt to be playful and upbeat in otherwise dark times.

~ MEGAN BUSKEY