Thomas Hardy’s masterwork delivered with power and drama. Tess by Ockham’s Razor

Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres, Great Malvern
November 15, 2023

Dance is a regular feature in the Wessex of Thomas Hardy: as entertainment, as part of celebrations, and for giving opportunities for people to meet and fall in love. As the author was the son of a fiddler, perhaps that’s no surprise. His books portray real people with all their weaknesses, and real life. There is love and humour, but also hardship and heartbreak. Many of his characters are troubled or find themselves in troubled relationships.

It sounds perfect stage dance territory. Yet productions are few and far between, David Bintley’s Far From the Madding Crowd being an oasis in the desert. But now we have a new one in Tess by Ockham’s Razor. Directed by Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney, and with choreography by Nathan Johnston, it’s a telling that captures beautifully the poetry of Hardy and the depth of the novel. It sweeps you away in its story and characters. It will have Hardy fans purring with delight.

Harvey and Mooney’s adaptation of the author’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles weaves together acrobatic dance, physical theatre and text, with a dash of circus and aerials. It’s a real rollercoaster ride of emotions. At different times it’s charming, humorous, frightening and ultimately heartbreaking, but always, always mesmerising. And, remarkably, all with just seven performers.

It starts with a brief indication of the end, before bursting into country life. The novel tends not to be remembered for sunshine and lightness but a bell chimes and birds sing. People dance joyously. It’s so innocent. And so different from much of what is to come.

As it moves through the different phases of Tess’ adult life, actor Macadie Amoroso narrates and voices her words as she watches herself in the form of dancer Lila Naruse. Amoroso even occasionally joins in dances, but it’s when she addresses the audience directly that she’s at her most powerful. It’s Tess telling her own story, which somehow magnifies the impact and feeling.

Together, Amoroso and Naruse project Tess as a good person. She’s resilient. She’s strong, but also vulnerable as she tries best to deal with the hand fate has dealt her.

Every major incident that is in Hardy’s novel is here with everyone apart from Tess doubling up in roles at some point. Tess’ ill-fated accident on the cleverly reimagined family horse is as graphic as can be, the collision with the mail cart dramatically portrayed in slow-motion. Touching scenes include her baptising her infant son, Sorrow, and when she is abandoned by Angel Claire. The attention to detail is superb. All the time, little things mean a lot.

Johnston’s choreography is uncomplicated yet very effective, whether portraying emotions or in lighter scenes, as when a harvest dance echoes machinery and work.

None of the circus is there purely for its circus value. Everything has meaning. Everything is integral to the story. That’s most dramatically illustrated by Joshua Fraser as Alec D’Urberville, whose use of the cyr wheel becomes an extension of his character’s personality. There is something incredibly unsettling about the way he first peers through the wheel. When he spins on it, Tess watches, hypnotised. Then, left to turn on its own, the wheel circles around Tess, literally trapping her. When it finally crashes to the floor, the loud rumble is reminiscent of thunder, a portent of the forthcoming storms in her life.

The scene on The Chase when Tess is violated by Alec is handled deftly. Afterwards, a cold wind is heard in the soundscape.

Alec’s later reappearance in the story, after Tess has met and split from Angel Claire immediately rekindles old desires. But now Alec seems even more sinister. He hangs from the wooden structure, in his frock coat looking for all the world like a vampire waiting for the right moment to snare his prey.

Nat Whittingham is a gentlemanly Angel who is at the centre of the story’s lightest moment, that when he offers to carry all four dairymaids over a swollen stream so they can get to church. Swooning, they grab the opportunity to get as close as possible to the man they all desire. When he carries Tess, Izz, Retty and Marian (Leah Wellings, Lauren Jamieson and Victoria Skillen) giggle like schoolgirls as they ogle the couple.

For all the story is about Tess, it is perhaps Angel who has the line that sets the course towards the end. On their wedding night, when he finally learns of her previous relationship with Alec, it hits him like a thunderbolt and he deserts her. Ignoring the fact that he has a similar skeleton in the cupboard, “How can we live together while that man lives?” he asks. Words that will be fatefully reawakened when he returns to the scene to find Tess has given in to Alec once again.

The deceptively simple-looking set by Tina Bicât (also responsible for the excellent period costumes) evokes both the vast open landscape of Hardy’s Wessex and intimate interiors amazingly well. Much inventive use is made of wooden planks that become horses, carts, coffins, church pews and altar, and eventually the steps to the scaffold on which Tess breathes her last. Perhaps most clever of all though, is the way they are used as a device to indicate travelling between locations.

Elsewhere, livestock in the fields is evoked with a sheets of linen on ropes hung from above. The milking barn at Talbothays is rather cleverly built as part of the action but, although the narrative stops for its construction, it feels right. Udders in its milking parlour are made innovatively with air-filled bags.

On a screen behind, Daniel Denton’s impressionist moving projections are a Turner-esque evocation of the Dorset landscape and the changing seasons. There’s excellent support too from Holly Khan’s never intrusive soundscape and Aideen Malone’s lighting.

Tess murdering Alec is tastefully done, the actual stabbing partly obscured. A neat touch is the blood red cloth on the table and her scarf, however.

After that, and as in the book, the end comes quickly but is beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure. Tess and Angel have a last dance under the stars of Salisbury Plain. Again, it’s simple. But it speaks so loudly of love. That we know it’s their last night together just magnifies the feeling. When the policeman arrives, she goes quietly, accepting her fate.

Unlike in Hardy’s novel, we do see Tess’ hanging, although it’s presented simply and sympathetically. She does dance on the rope. But death comes as a release. As Naruse goes into a graceful aerial sequence, it’s as if Tess’ spirit has been released. She has found freedom at last.

Tess is not perfect. The characters are not as earthy as in the novel, the hardships of Victorian rural Dorset life are rather glossed over. But it does get to the heart of the woman that was Teresa Durbeyfield, one of English literature’s most tragic heroines. It is a grand, and fitting portrait.

As Tess asks of her mother at one point, “Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk?” Why indeed?

Tess by Ockham’s Razor is touring widely in 2024, including to London’s Peacock Theatre from January 31-February 3 as part of mimeLondon.