Day 3: 1 p.m. Time Slot

Show: From the Diary of Virginia Woolf
Die Roll: 4
Venue: Hennepin Stages, Upstairs
Company: Nautilus Music Theatre

There are two quotes from the lyrics of this show that stuck out for me:
--- "What sort of diary should I like mine to be?"
--- "Why not invent a new kind of play?"
In essence, those are the two questions that the whole cycle answered for me. The kind of diary was a vocal collage represented by the staging of assembling a collage-like diary, and the staging of this operatic song cycle in a dramatic manner did seem to be a new kind of play. The material was not offensive, or over-the-top, but this show is what I'm looking for when I search for something that is "Fringy." It did try to do something that no other show is doing this year. And it did it admirably.

Now, before I proceed much further, I ought to tell you that although I sing opera on a nightly basis (come see Carmen at Theatre de la Jeune Lune), I do not feel qualified to analyze the performance from a purely musical standpoint. Most of what I have to say will be about how it worked as a play. Even if it is a new kind of play.

First off, Jill Anna Ponasik had great stage presence and carried this show very well. Her voice was strong and her words clear. Normally in a play you don't have to say that, but in operatic performances with English texts, words are often sacrificed for sound. Also, acting is often sacrificed for the sake of looking dramatic. Jill sacrificed nothing. I could understand both the words and the intentions perfectly.

Oh! In addition to the two questions that were directly from the text of the songs, there was one other that haunted me throughout the show... Was Virginia Woolf another Martha Stewart? This thought came from the staging of the assemblage of the diary itself. Ponasik's Woolf applied glue to the backs of different snippets from her life and pasted them into her diary. The songs often were inspired by the feelings that welled up while putting together the memoir.

The pieces of paper that she put into the book were brightly colorful, and that made you think that this person who was Viginia Woolf must have been very colorful, too. Colorful, and yet not as well assembled as her diary. The papers allowed for a beautiful analogy later, "I will go down with my colors flying!"

The songs seemed to show her going a little insane over the things of daily life. Creative frustration, a funeral, finding oneself a "little over-dramatic" (which supplied one of the show's musically humorous moments, as the fortissimo high dudgeon of one line was immediately followed by an introverted and introspective observation a piano-level).

A song about a trip to Rome captured both the romantic beauty of travelling abroad, and the feelings of seeing those places as they really are. Very insightful.

As she closed her diary, and the play came to a close as well, I couldn't help but think that the show was very rewarding. First off, as I mentioned in an earlier column, I truly believe that Jill Anna has one of the best voices in town. She can capture feeling in it that is truly emotionally gripping. And secondly the performance is something that makes you think and feel, and that is what art is all about. If it can accomplish a reaction, which this does, then it is truly art, and truly what the Fringe ought to be about.