Woolf Works review

Yasmine Naghdi sparkles as the young Clarissa, whirling brightly in gauzy skirts. Francesca Hayward is a fierce, darting Sally. Stalking through it all, though, is Septimus, the shell-shocked soldier who acts as a kind of dark reflection of Clarissa. Calvin Richardson moves with a sense of battered, weary defeat through choreography that evokes a collapsing mind, powerful and full of pathos, especially when partnering his lost comrade (Joseph Sissens).

Becomings takes its cues from Orlando, Woolf’s dazzlingly defiant, shape-shifting novel of 1928, whose protagonist lives for three centuries switching from man to woman. Bodily transformation being right up McGregor’s choreographic street, here is where he fully unleashes his trademark contortions on the 12 dancers. They careen about in Moritz Junge’s retro-futuristic costumes, on a stage mapped out with sweeping laser beams, as Max Richter’s entrancing score plays through 17 variations of La Folia. Surface glitter aplenty, then – particularly when Fumi Kaneko struts on stage and sends the sensuality of a notably twisty duet stratospheric. But frustratingly, it doesn’t ever seem to find a deeper resonance.

Tuesday, by contrast, is almost overwhelming in its poignancy and emotional depths. Partly echoing Woolf’s densely textured 1931 novel The Waves, it is also a meditation on the author’s death by suicide. A greyscale video frieze of pounding waves dominates above the dancers, and Woolf’s last note to her husband is our introduction to the piece, read by Gillian Anderson.

Then we are swept away by Ferri’s return as Woolf. William Bracewell partners her with a desperate thwarted protectiveness; a group of playing children throw her into a bruised, brooding contemplation of her childlessness. The dancers mass together, echoing the churning waves above them, and Ferri is caught in their maelstrom; buffeted, tossed, eventually finding stillness. It’s an absolute heartbreaker of a piece – and Ferri imbues the role with the experiences, loves and losses of decades.