Review: DALLOWAY: FIRST LOVE Explains It All at Gloucester Stage Company

The reimagining of characters from classic plays and novels can be a dicey proposition, with Amy Herzog’s adapted revivals of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” and “An Enemy of the People,” among the best, and the many stage adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” – including the most recent by Kate Hammill and Lauren Gunderson, a decidedly mixed bag – being but a few examples.

With “Dalloway: First Love” – being presented by Gloucester Stage Company through August 29 in a rolling world premiere under Rebecca Bradhsaw’s layered and moving direction – playwright Lindsay Joelle (“The Garbologists,” “TRAYF”) has come up aces with her humorously enchanting prequel to the 1925 Virginia Woolf classic “Mrs. Dalloway,” which, originally titled “The Hours,” details one day in the protagonist’s life.

Fans of Woolf know that titular character as a wealthy 51-year-old hostess in post-World War II London. In this new play, set in 1890, Joelle has turned back the clock to when Clarissa Parry (Josephine Moshiri Elwood) was a sprightly Victorian teenager content to climb trees rather than entertain the slew of suitors her cash-strapped father has lined up for her. Clarissa is under pressure to find a husband and save her family’s estate when she is visited by Sally Seton (Haley Dyana Schwartz), an unashamed suffragette with the confident appeal to persuade Clarissa that she might want to forge a new path for herself.

In Joelle’s look at Mrs. Dalloway’s teenage days, we see that her first love was Sally, with whom she shared a furtive first kiss. Acted with tenderness by Elwood and Schwartz, that moment becomes one of play’s most quietly exultant. As Clarissa declares to Sally, “You woke me up.” Ultimately, the kiss represents a brief time in their lives as Sally explains why she came to Bourton in Gloucestershire and why she can’t stay.

While they are together, however, Clarissa becomes intrigued by Sally’s hope for a world where women are no longer expected to marry. Before Sally says her farewells, the pair fantasize about a world “where every flower grows” and where there is no marriage, no societal pressures, and “only woods and water, and love.” Elwood and Schwartz are superb in these and other scenes, each demonstrating magnetic sensitivity and strength.

Life is seldom that simple, though, as the women experience while contending with the various men in their lives, played fascinatingly by Jesse Garlick – in a host of roles including Clarissa’s father and “the slew,” the many men, some quite quirky, in romantic pursuit of her – and Shobhit Piasa as the kindly and impoverished Peter Walsh, Clarissa’s best friend.

While the cast of four fine actors play the plot’s multiple characters, scenic designer Kristin Loeffler’s gnarly old oak tree commands center stage, at the back of a lawn of aromatic mulch, witnessing these characters’ lives as it has the many who’ve come before them. The sprawling oak anchors the atmospheric set under M Berry’s moody lighting design, while Chelsea Kerl’s period costumes also add considerably to the visual appeal of the production.

Acknowledging that she could not know what the late Woolf would have thought of “Dalloway: First Love,” Joelle wrote in her program note, “I do feel certain that the play’s themes of feminism, inclusivity, and finding one’s voice and agency would receive her hearty approval.”

If the hearty applause the play received at a recent performance in Gloucester is any indication, Woolf would most definitely approve.

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