Virginia Woolf wrote just one known stand-alone play, meant to be performed by and for her Bloomsbury crowd as a private entertainment.
Updated in 1935 from the 1923 version, "Freshwater" was a literate farce poking fun at great Victorian figures in the arts.
To celebrate the 125th anniversary of Woolf's birth, Women's Project and SITI Company have combined both versions of the play into a single, charming production. Anne Bogart directs this self-styled "lighthearted romp," now in a limited run at the Julia Miles Theatre.
The actors are meant to be Woolf's relatives and friends, who are in turn, with tongues firmly in cheeks, performing an "amateur theatrical" that caricatures distinguished geniuses. The self-aware Bloomsbury set knows they're also mocking their own generation.
Gathered at a summer home serving as an artists' colony on the Isle of Wight are poet Alfred Tennyson (Stephen Duff Webber), painter George Frederick Watts (Barney O'Hanlon), philosopher Charles Hay Cameron (Tom Nelis) and his wife, photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (Ellen Lauren), who was also Woolf's great-aunt. Akiko Aizawa gets laughs as a perpetually cranky maid named Mary Magdalen.
These giants in their respective fields are wittily ridiculed for their eccentricities and self-involvement. The Camerons are always about to travel to India, but can't leave until they have a pair of coffins. Meanwhile, Julia Cameron is constantly demanding that members of the household freeze in awkward positions so she can photograph them.
Tennyson wanders around the cartoonlike garden, reading endlessly from his poem "Maud." Apparently likening himself to Christ, he frequently complains that "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head!" And Watts, obsessed about painting one toe of Mammon, repeats his motto, "The Utmost for the Highest!" as he dashes around trying to recapture his Muse.
Kelly Maurer provides a welcome, sensible foil as Ellen Terry, here called Nell, who in real life went on to become one of the great actresses of her era. As the unhappy teenage bride of the art-obsessed Watts, Nell has become quite bored posing all day for her husband and watching the "old gentlemen" take naps and snore. She yearns for love rather than abstract admiration.
Maurer's subtle, droll performance brightens up all three acts of the play, especially in a delightful scene devoted to Nell's seaside meeting with a handsome, young admirer, Lieutenant John Craig, played by the amusing Gian Murray Gianino.
The cheerful set and imaginative costuming, both by James Schuette, add to the farcical mood conjured by this comedic cast in constant motion. Woolf's amusing gibes at human foibles are resonant whatever the century, such as the preference of older, successful men for young, attractive trophy wives.
"Freshwater" is providing fun and puns at the Julia Miles Theatre through Feb. 15.
