Woolf Works review, Royal Opera House: A layered, haunting ballet

Ideas and characters overlap in the ballet’s own stream of consciousness

Alessandra Ferri and William Bracewell in Wayne McGregor’s ‘Woolf Works’ (©2023 Asya Verzhbinsky)

In Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, Virginia Woolf’s life and her subjects overlap, sharing the same space. It’s a layered, haunting ballet, with an elegiac central performance by Alessandra Ferri.

Created in 2015, this was McGregor’s first full-length work for The Royal Ballet. He’s always been drawn to conceptual and abstract dance, while this company has a strong narrative tradition: they’re natural dance actors, with a long history of story ballets. Here, they meet in the middle, with ideas and characters overlapping in the ballet’s own stream of consciousness. Max Richter’s atmospheric score gives the evening tension and melancholy.

With Uzma Hameed as dramaturge, the first act draws on Mrs Dalloway, with Ferri as both the older Clarissa Dalloway and as Woolf herself. The role was made for Ferri, a senior ballerina making a grand return to her first company; the performer brings her own echoes. On stage, she wanders among her memories.