BWW Reviews: VITA AND VIRGINIA at Thinking Cap Theatre

If you're an admirer of English literature of the 1920s and 30s, au fais with the Bloomsbury Group and its marital misadventures, and simply adore fine acting, directing and staging, then VITA AND VIRGINIA at the Thinking Cap Theatre is the piece for you.

What could be a pretty quiet evening of two actresses reading letters to each other is instead a visual and vocal delight as Niki Fridh and Barbara Sloan dance an evening of seduction. Fridh plays Vita Sackville-West, flamboyant novelist, poet, world traveler and enthusiastic breaker of polite society's rules. Sloan is Virginia Woolf, drab, suicidal, a literary genius. Two women, spiritually and carnally attracted to each other, but the one with her madness and the other with her endless dissatisfaction, are in all ways unable to find contentment.

On an all white stage with splashes of color, Fridh and Sloan win and lose and win again as they read their letters back and forth in a brilliant staging by Director Nicole Stodard. Watch the reader, watch the listener; it's a fascinating giving and taking between two extraordinary characters. Fridh gives Vita the ebullience and slight arrogance of a woman not only wealthy but successful with her own desires. She conquers, she dismisses. She exceeds with her writing and knows it yet fawns over Virginia's work and her person. Sloan's Virginia, frumpily middle-aged, suffers her headaches, battles her madness, rages with jealousy and brilliantly seduces.

English actress Eileen Atkins wrote VITA AND VIRGINIA, a dense Bloomsbury name dropping piece that despite its limited scope is a fascinating look at the lives of two married women to whom writing was a license to live.

Alyiece Morretto designed the relatively simple set, the suggestion of a lounge for Vita and a bedroom for Virginia. There are three large archways in a row. The outer two are hung with sheer curtains, behind which the women dress, work and pose, transformed by the magical lighting of Calypso Hernandez.

The very appropriate costumes were designed by Nicole Stodard and Casey Dressler and the maid/dresser is Emma Magner. Sound design by David Hart and Nicole Stodard.

VITA AND VIRGINIA is playing at the Thinking Cap Theatre at the Vanguard through May 3. 1501 South Andrews Avenue, Ft. Lauderdale. 813-220-1546 http://www.thinkingcaptheatre.com

L - R: Niki Fridh, Barbara Sloan

Photo: Nicole Stadard