Virginia Woolf Essays at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Last week we went to a reading of two of Virginia Woolf's most famous essays, 'A Room Of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas', at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in Shakespeare's Globe. The readers were Hattie Morahan and Joan Iyiola. Both essays were abridged so each lasted about 1:30 hours.

I think it's a great idea to hold readings in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse since it's small and intimate, lit by candles and it's a nice, gentle way to spend an evening. I don't think I've ever been read to for one and half hours straight. The readers stood alone on stage, turning the pages and taking gulps of water now and then to keep going. It must take a lot of skill to be able to read aloud like that.

I read both essays many years ago (probably several decades ago) so it was nice to be reintroduced to them this way. It was also good to be reminded of Virginia's massive intellect and incisive vision, roaming around all sorts of idea and theories while never straying from her central themes.

Thank you Sam, I enjoyed the evening very much.

Vanessa Bell at Dulwich Picture Gallery

There's a new retrospective of the work of Vanessa Bell at  Dulwich Picture Gallery which is well worth a visit. Vanessa holds a possibly odd place in the hierarchy of 20th Century British art and I don't have any feeling for how well known she is - or I didn't until I attended on Saturday afternoon and it was incredibly busy. She's the sister of Virginia Woolf and is at the centre of the Bloomsbury group, the creator of Charleston house which was often the country refuge for the Bloomsberries. So she's there at the heart of this early 20th Century coterie of artists and thinkers but is she known in her own right? If not, she deserves to be after this excellent exhibition.

The exhibition is made up largely of paintings but there are also examples of her photographs, her book covers for her sister's books (I was pleased that they were displayed as books and not simply as framed designs), examples of her textile designs for the Omega Workshop printed on linen, an example of her ceramics, a painted screen along with other designs for screens. There's something here for everyone.

Vanessa is, of course, the poster girl for the exhibition, with her self-portrait from 1915 on the posters and front of the catalogue. It hangs in the first room beside a portrait of her sister, Virginia, from 1912. It's nice that they were hung together. 

It's thinly painted and, presumably, done quite quickly. She did several paintings of Virginia, some with the face obscured or not showing, presumably to emphasise that Virginia's work was about the inner life, not the external. But I like this portrait, a young Virginia who has yet to hit her stride as a writer, still finding her own style and her own reasons to write.  I think that's almost caught in her eyes, heavy lidded and thoughtful, her body almost blending with the background, just the hair, the eyes and the slightly parted lips standing out.

Vanessa did lots of portraits of the Bloomsbury group, of family and friends, but what I didn't realise was that she did lots of landscapes throughout her life. There's a room dedicated to her landscapes, vast vistas of rolling hills or glimpses through a window and I loved the colours in them, very expressive and bold. One of my favourites was 'View of the Pond at Charleston', her home down in Surrey. The colours are lovely and warm, welcoming, as we see the pond in the garden through a window with a vase on the window sill. It's very comforting and welcoming, guaranteeing a pleasant stay at Charleston when you need it most. I like the curtain and the objects on the window sill, an interior looking out.

Another interior was 'The Other Room', the largest painting in the exhibition. We see a room with a vase of flowers just off centre, and then notice the three women all engaged in their own business, not talking or interacting. The blocks of colour and the swag of the curtain and pattern of the green arm chair. One woman looking down, one seemingly reading and one looking out into the garden - what is she looking at? The day is warm and still, so what's going on in that room? Have the women had an argument? I don't think so otherwise there would be signs of turbulence. They're in their own worlds and perfectly comfortable there.

Another 'interior' painting that caught my eye was actually called 'Interior With The Artis'ts Daughter', Angelica Bell, from about 1935. This is more thickly painted and a more detailed painting, with rows of books behind Angelica sitting in the arm chair in the distance. The foreground is taken up with a table with a vase, scissors and thread and a pamphlet and we look through a doorway to the library. I like the detail of the book shelves, of the rug and the table cloth and the other vase of flowers beside the arm chair. Vanessa seemed to like vases of flowers and they feature in many paintings, from these 'interiors' to still lives. Are we suppose to admire the decorative inside of Charleston in this painting or is there a message about the young lady reading? Who knows?

The painting with the most people in it and most people interacting is 'Bathers' from 1911. Partially clothed, clothed and naked, this group of people on the beach makes for an intriguing painting - what's going on? The colours are warm and sunny and the figures seem to be mainly female but what do these groups say to us? There are very young girls, older, teenage girls, woman as mother and a woman naked as Venus, overlooking the scene. There is also a figure in the striped skirt with a parasol gazing out across the beech. What is going on? I don't know, but I stood and looked at this painting for a while, trying to puzzle it out, wondering what they might have been looking at and when it would be tea time.  

There's a lot to see and consider in this exhibition and I intend to go back to see it again during the week when I hope it will be less busy so I can wander and gaze in a more relaxed environment. One of the portraits I really liked was of 'Duncan Grant In Front Of A Mirror', in which Duncan is painted from behind with his face in a scrap of mirror with a cloth over his head. What an original way of doing a portrait.

Well done to Dulwich Picture Gallery for a great exhibition and for putting Vanessa Bell clearly on the map. I've seen various paintings by Vanessa over the years but have never been in a room surrounded by her work and knowing there are more rooms to come. I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition and fully recommend it. I'll be going back for seconds!

2015 and The Year of The New

Now that we're at the end of the year, it's worth noting that early on 2015 was designated The Year Of The New. New things would be done, new places visited, new things seen - it was time to be brave and jump in with both feet. Everything might not be a success but why not take a few risks since the dividends could be enormous.

So, what sort of things were new?

First of all, there were new art galleries to visit and, sometimes, new favourite artists to discover. At the start of the year we went to Leighton House Museum, the former home of Victorian painter Frederick Leighton, and it was there that I became aware of Lawrence Alma-Tadema and started hunting out paintings by him. See? A new obsession can be started anywhere.

Another new favourite was the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris, a suburban mansion house converted into a great small gallery with exhibition spaces and a great shop that sold books in English. It was great fun to wander round the museum not knowing what the next room might hold - anything from medieval illuminated manuscripts to an exhibition of paintings about women's toilet habits. It was a lovely discovery and a musee I will definitely return to.

I've never been a big fan of portrait paintings but this year seems to have been full of exhibitions of portraiture. From the late Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery and the great Sergeant exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery at the start of the year, through the self-portraits of artists in Vasari's Corridor in Florence, to Goya and to Mme Vigee Le Brun at Le Grand Palais in Paris right up to Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery this week - lots of portraits. I would never have expected to see so many portraits in any one year and learn to look at them. And make up stories about the sitters.

It was also the year to experiment with dance and opera. I'm a regular at Matthew Bourne (now Sir Matthew, of course) productions but I'd never seen a classic ballet. Equally, I've been to comic-opera like Gilbert & Sullivan but not seen a full-on classical opera production. Seeing a production of 'Peter Pan' by the Welsh National Opera was disappointing (so much so that I didn't even blog about it) but 'The Barber Of Seville' was better. I'm still not sold on opera but will give it another go in the spring with 'Il Traviata'. A far greater success was ballet.

2015 is the year I fell in love with ballet. It started with a trip to the Royal Opera House to see 'Woolf Works', a new ballet piece based on three novels by Virginia Woolf and that resulted in booking more tickets. There was the full-length fairytale of 'Cinderella', the 'Triple Bill' of different short ballets and then the masterpiece of 'Romeo & Juliet', a classic ballet on a grand scale by the Royal Ballet and I was hooked. The energy and athleticism of the dancers, the glorious costumes and sets, the lighting and the wonderful music, all contributing to taking the story forward. I suspect you need to see the right thing to  start to love ballet and I was very lucky this year that I saw the perfect productions that caused me to regret not seeing ballet for the last 30 years - so much missed but so much to explore in future.

There were lots of other 'news' in 2015 of course (including a new job) but these are some highlights. Things I never imagined I'd like - like ballet - have emerged as things I now love. I've broadened my horizons and that's a good thing. So people, if you're reading this take a risk in 2016 and try something new, something you haven't done or thought about before, something to surprise yourself. Be brave!

I officially designate 2016 as The Year Of More New!

'Woolf Works' at the Royal Opera House

'Woolf Works' is the latest production from the Royal Ballet being staged at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That's a lot of 'royals' in one sentence. I'm not a big fan of ballet but, following on from the exhibition about Virginia Woold last year at the National Portrait Gallery, I wanted to see what they would do with a Woolf-themed ballet. And they did wonderfully well!

A lot of money has obviously been spent on the Royal Opera House. It has great access, thick carpets, great lighting and stairs, an incredibly light and airy champagne bar with an arched glass roof and, from my experience last night, some excellent staff (well done to whoever deals with customer care). It was a delight to be there (and I don't say that of every theatre I go to!). The main theatre space is equally impressive with seats with lots of leg room and, at least where I was sitting, great sight lines to the stage. Gosh, this is fun, I thought as I waited for the show to begin, having absolutely no idea what to expect other than there were three ballets and two half times. And that was part of the joy, the not knowing.

The lights went down and a voice starts talking about words, about how the English language is old and all the words have been out and about and used so often… and that was Virginia Woolf speaking, a recording from a radio broadcast she made in the 1930s. For there she was. Virginia was with us. Her handwriting was projected onto the stage that then coalesced into the classic portrait of the young Virginia Stephen in the National Portrait Gallery. This was replaced by old photos of London, starting with the street sign for Dean's Yard and moving up Whitehall and we were into 'Mrs Dalloway'. What a stunning and imaginative way to start.

The first performance was 'I Now, I Then' about 'Mrs Dalloway' with a bare stage with three giant wooden squares slowly, ever so slowly, rotating on their own axes. And on comes the 50 year old Clarissa waiting for her party and joined by her younger self, dancing together and apart. We meet Peter Walsh, again an older and younger version and, of course, Septimus and Rezia all taking turns centre stage, dancing in-between the turning buildings with lots of walking and moving around London as in the book. And what a joy to have Sally Seton bound onto the stage to interrupt Clarissa's dance with her younger self, the elfin free-spirit that is Sally. We don't see the mature Sally, the mother of five 'strapping boys', she is always the girl who stole a kiss and created possibilities.

Round and round they go, the clock ticking and the music carrying them forward. Septimus dances with Rezia but then his old army comrade appears, his dead comrade that only he can see, and the tone changes. Sweeping on and off stage, keeping the tale moving, going on towards a party because there is a party y'know. Old and young Peter taking their turn, with older Peter wearing a jacket so he has a pocket to keep his pen-knife in. And still the giant wooden squares turn and the clock ticks and London life continues as it always does.

And the lights went out and the curtain came down and I clapped and clapped, waiting for those magical creatures on the stage to come out for their rightful applause. The curtain stayed down so we headed to the big bar (obv).

Half an hour later we were back in our seats for 'Becomings' or the tale of 'Orlando'. Orlando is a young man who turns into a woman against an Elizabethan backdrop of courtly intrigue and opulence, frost fairs on the Thames and Russian aristocrats dropping pearls like lice. Orlando wakes up as a woman and travels through the centuries, immortal and eternal. Most of the dancing is in male/female pairs, showing the duality of nature, sometimes energetic and wild and other times slow and stately.

The music was excellent in this section, mixing classical and electronic with one movement building to a crescendo that I could feel in my stomach and made me look around expecting the plaster to start dropping from the ceiling and walls. It didn't. But as the play progressed the dancers wore less and less, moving from the gold Elizabethan costumes to wearing grey body suits.

Time passes and there are star bursts on the stage with high spotlights shining down from the stars through which the dancers leap and pose in a  wild frenzy, quicker and quicker as you try to take it all in and utterly fail. It was most spectacular and a great way to send us out for another 30 minute interval while the stage was reset for the final ballet.

'Tuesday' was the final section and was from 'The Waves', a bare stage with a big image of waves crashing onto the shore above the stage. The constant movement of this section, along with the music, imitating the movement of waves crashing and lolling about, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, doing as they please and as the tide dictates. Dancers slowly emerging from the darkened back of the stage, dancing and interacting before moving back and disappearing into the dark. At one point the stage was full of children playing in the sand and surf and then they move on to be replaced again by waves.

It was the shortest of the three ballets but possibly the most affecting due to the constant wave-like movement that sticks in the mind. The dancers running out in a raggedy line and the slowly moving backwards a few steps, just like waves, as the tide gradually recedes and the dancers move two steps forward and three steps backwards, gradually disappearing in the gloom at the back of the stage. It was mesmerising. And then it was over and time to clap clap clap as we were finally allowed to pay tribute.

Wow. I was stunned. I was drawn in in a way that doesn't often happen in the theatre but these folks did it. I was thinking this morning on the way to work, to the mundane after the magic of last night, what is ballet? It's dancing, obviously, but it's so much more. It's the entire experience of being in that theatre at that time with all those people both on and off the stage. It's the scenery and staging, it's the costumes that illustrate the story, it's the lighting and music that help to transport you… and the dancers.  It's everything put together in the right measures and that is Art.

I loved the whole thing. The first thing I did on getting home was to go online to see if there were tickets for future performances and sadly (for me) there aren't. It's sold out. But I'm pleased to be able to see that I saw the sixth ever public performance of 'Woolf Works' by the Royal Ballet - yes, the programme is that detailed. It was choreographed and directed by Wayne McGregor and the excellent music was by Max Richter and I will be watching out for them in future. Thank you.

I saw magic in that there Royal Opera House and I will return.

Virginia Woolf - Art, Life and Vision... Plus

There's an exhibition about Virginia Woolf at the National Portrait Gallery at the moment that illustrates her life through portraiture and her writing. It starts off with photographs of her parents and family, early photos from the late 1800s, and moves on to focus on Virginia and her friends. She was at the centre of the development of writing and the arts in the early part of the last century so her circle of family and friends covered some of the most important artists of the day from critics like Roger Fry to poets like TS Eliot to artists like her sister Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and they're all featured in the exhibition. Also featured, of course, is her husband, Leonard Woolf, who, amongst other things founded the Hogarth Press that published many of the more experimental pieces of writing of the time.

It's not a very large exhibition and many of the things on display are small so crowds tend to develop around the artefacts and paintings/photographs. It was nice that it was so busy on a random Thursday afternoon with a surprising number of older people intently looking at the exhibits. I don't think there's been an exhibition like this before - or at least in recent years - which might explain its popularity.

We see portrait photographs of the young Virginia Stephen, all posed as you'd expect of the late Victorians and photographs of Virginia throughout her life. Some are by friends at events of various types and others are by 'proper' photographers like Man Ray and Gisele Freund. I liked Gisele's photo of Virginia sitting on a big couch with her cocker spaniel Pinka at her feet. It's a rather domestic scene for someone with Virginia's intellectual reputation.

Two painted portraits are side by side in the exhibition from what looks like the same sitting, one by Roger Fry and the other by Vanessa Bell (Vanessa's is used in the poster for the exhibition). The earliest portrait is by Duncan Grant with Virginia Stephen apparently sitting and chatting to her sister wearing her big Edwardian hat - according to the label Virginia came into the room while he was painting, sat down in hat and coat and started talking to Vanessa so he started painting her. It's a nice tale of unthinking intimacy that something was so important that she just had to talk to Vanessa about it straight away.

There are also photos and paintings of family, friends and accomplices, of Leonard and Vanessa, of her brother Adrian and nephew Julian Bell who died in the Spanish Civil War. There are portraits of people like Vita Sackville-West and Hope Mirrlees (who looks like a young Felicity Kendal to me). There's a lovely painting of Vanessa by Duncan Grant and a self-portrait by Dora Carrington.

As well as paintings and photographs there are a lot of other exhibits in the form of first edition books hand-printed by the Hogarth Press (such as a first edition of TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land') and some of Virginia's books with covers designed by Vanessa. It's nice to be able to see these on display. There's also the bust of Virginia by Stephen Tomlin and a small painting ('Weeping Woman') that Picasso donated rather than attend a benefit arranged by the Bloomsbury people to raise money for families affected by the Spanish Civil War. The saddest exhibits were her farewell letters to Leonard and Vanessa, presented together in one frame. There are also some oddities like the 'black book' that listed all the people Hitler wanted to be arrested on sight following the German invasion of Britain that included Virginia and Leonard's names.

There's a rather touching painting by Vanessa from 1943 called 'The Memoir Club' which features a selection of the great and good sitting round chattering away about art, politics and people. On the wall, are portraits of lost friends and members of the club - Virginia Woolf (and it's nice that it's Duncan Grant's early portrait of the young Virginia), Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry. Gone but not forgotten and, with Virginia's literary legacy, never to be forgotten.

It's a very interesting and thought-provoking exhibition and well worth seeing.

Virginia Woolf also features in another exhibition in London at the moment, the Books About Town festival of painted benches dotted around London and 'Mrs Dalloway' is one of the featured books. The 'Mrs Dalloway' bench is in Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and features a painting of Clarissa on the front and Septimus on the back. And here they are: