The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Bath Theatre Royal 2nd October 2008

The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Bath Theatre Royal

I went to see a great piece of theatre last night. 'The Waves' by Virginia Woolf. It was very unusual and certainly not recommended for anyone expecting a straightforward “beginning-middle-end” performance.

The novel itself is experimental, basically a series of monologues by the main characters (which was very unusual for 1931) so an equally experimental stage performance was called for.

Upon entering the theatre the audience were faced with a huge, cinema style screen, positioned above a long table. The table was set out in the style of a radio studio with six or seven microphones, sound effect tables etc. To the left and right of the stage were numerous blocks of shelving crammed with props. Technicians who appeared to be checking all the equipment, were in fact the actors. Also on stage were two video cameras.

The play starts with someone writing a date on a blackboard, the face of the blackboard is projected onto the large screen, someone else uses props to make the sound of chalk on a board (radio special effects style), a narrator (Virginia Woolf) delivers the prose (direct passages from the novel).

When the prose moves into the individual character monologues each vignette is filmed in real time and projected onto the screen, hence the theatre audience are effectively seeing a film ‘live’.

As the performance continues this becomes extremely clever, e.g. on stage an actor would be sitting, shawl around her shoulders, she would look through a piece of A3 size Perspex with a few leaves stuck to it, someone else was using a garden watering/spray can to create a ‘mist‘ on the Perspex. On stage this looked a bit odd! However on the giant screen this appeared to be someone sat on a train peering wistfully out of a window into the rain whilst another actor performed the ‘voice-over’ monologue.

At several times the cast managed to recreated cinema style split-screen effects ‘live’. On the screen it appeared as though the actors were sat opposite each other at a dinner party whilst on stage they were sat at opposite end of the long table.

I completed a scriptwriting course earlier this year and we touched on some of the basic differences between film scripts and stage scripts (and radio). One of the major differences between film and stage is the use of ‘close-ups’. A subtle inflection of the eyebrows or a grimace is lost in the theatre and should be avoided, people at the back simply wouldn’t see it. However the nature of this performance broke all those rules, close up’s, panoramic views even shots of a moving train!

Not the sort of performance for everyone, (I must admit there were a few empty seats after the interval and the woman behind me walked out after less than ten minutes, huffing and puffing saying ‘Richard Chamberlain was much better in the TV version and this was rubbish!’) but for anyone with an interest in writing for theatre/cinema or radio it’s brilliant.