Who would have thought a three-act response to Virginia Woolf’s novels would strike such a chord with audiences? But Wayne McGregor’s 2015 work has become part of the furniture at the Royal Ballet – it’s a wonderfully designed handclasp between form and feeling.
McGregor’s best works chase brainbox ideas alongside electric sensation – and even more than Dante and Margaret Atwood, Woolf helps him do this, with an added heartsick richness. Neither artist is driven by story so much as by finding a form to explore thought and emotion. Is living in memory a blessing or curse? In the first act, for Natalia Osipova’s Mrs Dalloway, it’s a chance to consider the road not taken: casual kisses with blonde Sally (Leticia Dias) that might have mattered more; yoking herself to William Bracewell’s chaotic dreamer. Osipova’s melancholy spaniel eyes gaze protectively at her livewire younger self (Sae Maeda, excellent) – then she steps into the memories, triangulating past and present.
