Riding The Waves

Putting The Waves on stage at the Jermyn St Theatre

“Let's stage the unstageable novel.” That was the challenge Flora Wilson Brown gave to herself when she decided to write a theatrical adaption of The Waves. She was only twenty-five at the time, but the prospect of adapting one of her favourite authors was too appealing to pass up. When I interviewed her and the play’s director, Júlia Levai, for the Virginia Woolf podcast, they told me that Woolf had long been a passion of theirs. “Sometimes the language feels elevated,” Flora explained “but she’s so honest about her feelings […] it feels really comforting to [know] someone felt like this a hundred years ago.”

That delicate balance between difficulty and empathy is what makes reading The Waves such a surreal experience. At some points it’s more a case of riding than reading. The prose swirls and eddies, creating a froth of interconnected images and themes. When you let go, it sounds like music, but I would be lying to you if I said this comes easily. Most readers enter the narrative only to find it sticks like a needle on a broken record. The turn table rotates, a sound plays, but it refuses to melt into the next phrase.