Every solar system needs a star to revolve around. But when the Bloomsbury Group descended on Garsington Manor they were all stars, and so the hostess has been eclipsed in memory. And this is a great shame because Ottoline Morrell was a fascinating woman in her own right. She may not have painted, written poetry or philosophised, but she loved beauty, she gardened, she ran a wayward household on a shoestring, and she was largely betrayed and unappreciated in return.
Janet Bolam’s play brings Ottoline and her husband Philip back into the spotlight, and really do them justice as fully realised characters. How lovely to turn the tables, and set Clive Bell, Bertrand Russell, DH and Frieda Lawrence, and Dora Carrington as the bit part players, while rounding out the Morrells and their maidservants. Ottoline (Elizabeth Hurran) emerges as a woman of determination, loving art and the arts, rolling up her sleeves to deal with all the crises thrown at her. (What sleeves they were! The wardrobe team outdid themselves with her varied finery, from silk pyjamas to glittering shawls, overalls to feathered hats.)
Philip meanwhile helped and hindered. He too was complex and flawed, statesmanlike but with an eye for the ladies, too weak to stand up to his father, in awe of his courageous wife. Nick Green gave us a handsome, serious interpretation, in which the weak streaks were slowly revealed.
Sadie, Lady Ottoline’s maid was played brilliantly by Victoria Wilson. Restrained, perhaps a little naïve, easily shocked,
Of the Bloomsbury Group, Lytton Strachey (Wayne Brown) really stood out with believable camp bitchiness that was never laid on too thick. Claire Denton wrung comedy from both her parts, as Frieda Lawrence the most forthright opponent of Ottoline, and standing in on first night as Helen Dudley the deadly poetess. Both parts demanded accents, which were consistent throughout. But everyone felt well cast and well used, giving us the other side of Ottoline’s devouring patronage and desire to control her entourage.
This is a play of ideas, and in some ways would work just fine as a radio play. But there’s no doubt that the tableaux of Bloomsburys on Ottoline’s stage, in the very gardens that Ottoline loved so much, just perfected the performance. It was perfectly believable that wars might rage outside the walls and hedges but that inside Ottoline and her husband created a refuge, a cunning ruse to save her Conchie friends and the ideals she believed in. In the interval we could wander, catching glimpses of the summer house built by DH Lawrence, the Italian pool which rang with laughter as guests bathed in the buff, spaces immortalised as backdrops in paintings and novels.
As the drama wrapped up, or perhaps began again, a solitary bat flew overhead, chasing moths drawn by the spotlights.