Virginia Woolf’s interior epic “Mrs Dalloway” survives — and thrives — following a surprisingly successful transplantation from London to Lagos in brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri‘s vivid and velvety “Clarissa,” which places a superb Sophie Okonedo, radiant with melancholy, at the heart of its remarkably well-cast ensemble. Expanding in ambition and feeling from their promising debut “This is My Desire” (aka “Eyimofe”), the Esiris cast a perceptive eye over the elite social constellation that has fallen into orbit around this dutiful but unfulfilled society wife, and have nothing but compassion for her as she spins slowly around and around at its center: loved by some, resented by others, admired by all — and totally alone.
From the outside, however, it seems like Clarissa (Okonedo) is rarely alone, least of all on this busy day when she’s preparing for a party that evening in her gracious Lagos home. There are household staff to chide over crockery and meal prep, there’s a daughter to cajole into attending, there’s a husband, Richard (Jude Akuwudike) whose lapels need smoothing and there’s an artwork to be hung wrong in the living room, complained about and grudgingly rehung.
There is quite some domestic comedy to all this bustle, and Clarissa is wryly patient despite her exasperation. Yet in unguarded moments, there is a little tug of sadness to the corner of her mouth. Just as Woolf’s novel was revelatory in its depiction of a woman presenting an efficient and engaged face to the world while thinking and feeling a whole other way, so does the ever-watchable Okonedo deliver beautifully on Clarissa’s ability to bilocate, to be right here and present, but also somewhere very far away.
