Review/Theater; Musical From a Virginia Woolf Novel
By MEL GUSSOW
Published: May 10, 1990
Virginia Woolf wrote the last pages of ''The Waves'' with ''such intensity and intoxication'' as to remind her of the times she was overcome by madness. With its torrential language and metaphorical interludes, the novel completely reflects the author's obsessive self-concern. Chronicling the interlocked relationships of six friends in Edwardian England, it is, to borrow the words of one of the characters, ''a mysterious illumination'' of life unto death.
Until the musical adaptation by David Bucknam and Lisa Peterson (presented by the New York Theater Workshop at the Perry Street Theater), it was difficult to imagine that anyone could transport this dense novel to the stage with any reasonable degree of fidelity.
In their version, clarification has necessarily led to a certain simplification, particularly in the second act. At the conclusion, the musical unwisely steps back from the abyss of the novelist's despairing vision. But the book, score and lyrics are suffused with a Woolfian intensity and intoxication. Mr. Bucknam (as co-author and composer) and Ms. Peterson (as co-author and director) have distilled the rarefied flavor of the novel, evoked its principal motifs and themes and made the work come alive on stage.
Coincidentally, in a season when Andrew Lloyd Webber has taken a minor Bloomsbury novel, ''Aspects of Love,'' and found no viable theatrical equivalent, Mr. Bucknam and Ms. Peterson have taken one of the great pinnacles of Bloomsbury literature and gone a long distance in reinventing it as musical theater.
In direct reaction to Galsworthy and other traditional novelists, Woolf viewed life as a ''semi-transparent envelope'' through which one receives impressions rather than details of external reality. The adapters approximate the author's stream of consciousness with a collage technique. As overlapping monologues become dialogues, as speech evolves into song, the effect is like that of soul addressing soul. In common with the novel, the musical exists on its own plane of reality. These are six disparate characters in search of oneness.
At the center of ''The Waves'' is Bernard, an unquenchable storyteller who is flattered to be regarded as a Byronic youth. As an adult, he disappoints himself. None of the characters is remotely content, not even Louis, who achieves notable success in business, or Susan, who embraces a provincial life as wife and mother. All six are haunted by the image of the unseen Percival, the golden youth brought to an untimely death in India (the character was based on the author's brother). From estheticism to romantic longing to middle-age regret, the characters share a heightened sense of self-awareness, a fact that makes their singing - and Mr. Bucknam's score - achieve a naturalness.
There is a whiff of Sondheim in the structure of the show as well as in the music, but it is combined with an amplitude of the composer's own voice, drawing upon Virginia Woolf as his inspiration. She is, after the fact, his active musical collaborator, with her prose gracefully adapting itself to lyrics. As a heady chamber musical, the show reminds one somewhat of ''Goblin Market,'' with the difference that the novel ''The Waves'' is far more resonant.
Monologues flow into music, some of it with a lightness (Louis's amusing ode to his daily business duties), others with a passionate introspection (Rhoda's ballad exploring her wish to be the mistress of her own figurative fleet). Occasionally there is a misstep, as in Susan's lullaby to motherhood, a song that belongs in a different show.
In the writing and in the performance (by Catherine Cox), the Rhoda on stage seems even more the author's surrogate as she wrestles with her emotional crises, including a predilection toward suicide. Watching ''The Waves,'' it is impossible to ignore the fact that the novelist herself chose death by drowning.
Each characterization is distinct, with especially strong work (singing as well as acting) by Sarah Rice as Susan, John Jellison as Louis and John Sloman as Bernard. Led by Ms. Peterson, the actors artfully discover a path through the effulgent prose. But Randy Benjamin's scenic design presents them with unneeded difficulties, layering the small stage into seven levels. Footing is made more precarious by the fact that the floor is covered with a groundcloth, on which are placed tilted chairs. This obstacle course of an environment is somewhat offset by a painterly backcloth of cloudlike waves (or wavelike clouds).
While the adaptation delineates the elation of youth, it is less secure in dealing with the disillusionment of adulthood. The conclusion of the book is Bernard's extended analysis of the six lives. Instead of leaving the reflections in the hands of Bernard, the show sifts his lines among the various characters.
In the novel, Bernard says that to deal with pain, there should be not words but ''cries, cracks, fissures,'' all of which are subordinated at the end of the musical. Having demonstrated earlier that they are unafraid of Virginia Woolf, the adapters should take one further step and offer a final indication of their dramatic fearlessness.
A musical adaptation of the novel ''The Waves'' by Virginia Woolf; text adapted by David Bucknam and Lisa Peterson; directed by Ms. Peterson; choreography by Marcia Milgrom Dodge; music and additional lyrics by Mr. Bucknam; musical direction and orchestrations by Helen Gregory; set design, Randy Benjamin; costumes, Michael Krass; lighting, Brian MacDevitt; sound, Bruce Kraemer; text and dialect coach, Robert Neff Williams; stage manager, Liz Small; production manager, George Xenos. New York Theater Workshop, James C. Nicola, artistic director; Nancy Kassak Diekmann, managing director, present the New Directors Series. At the Perry Street Theater, 31 Perry Street.
Rhoda . . . Catherine Cox
Jinny . . . Diana Fratantoni
Neville . . . Aloysius Gigi
Louis . . . John Jellison
Susan . . . Sarah Rice
Bernard . . . John Sloman