Dalloway, Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond

A WELCOME Return to the Georgian by Dyad Productions gave the Richmond audience another opportunity to meet a famous literary figure.

The combination of imaginative scripting by Elton Townend Jones and the dramatic skill of Rebecca Vaughan lifted Clarissa Dalloway from the pages of Virginia Wolf’s 1924 novel and spirited her to the Georgian’s stage.

Mrs Dalloway both appeared in, and narrated the events of one day in post-First World War London on which she was preparing to host a high society party.

As each new character was introduced, Vaughan demonstrated an almost unnerving ability to switch between them, using carefully delineated accents, facial expressions and voice tones.

Weaving an intricate tapestry of people, circumstances and ideologies, she created a sense of the stage being full of the novel’s assorted personalities. Subtly highlighting the issues of the time, such as the dissolution of the British class system, the phenomenon of “shell shock” and the uncertain advances of the modern world, the piece also exposed more enduring existential concerns – the passing of time, love, sexuality, aspirations and expectations.

The attention remained firmly on Vaughan, with only a white chaise longue and three white panels at the rear of the stage to provide a background.

With her hair fashionably styled into a chignon and wearing an emerald green dress, she captured the essence of the 51-year-old who feels “invisible, unseen and unknown”.

There were two particularly poignant scenes – when the traumatised Septimus successfully ends his own life, and when Clarissa expresses a hollow desperation in a moment of solitude during her own party.

Virginia Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing lent itself perfectly to Dyad Productions’ seamless style, and the Georgian’s confidential atmosphere rendered this an intimate encounter. I left feeling I’d just met the “real” Mrs Dalloway.

Christina McIntyre