Cincinnati Shakespeare Company has been doing some things that might surprise people. It’s not just staging plays by William Shakespeare (which it does excellently). But it flexes its artistic muscles farther by staging works rooted in the classics — sequels, in some cases, adaptations and so on. Back in May and June 2025 it offered the world premiere of a musical adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness novel Mrs. Dalloway, set in 1921. There were skeptics about how this could possibly work. But in the hands of playwright and composer Lindsay August Mercer, Mrs. Dalloway: A New Musical was well received, especially its folk-pop and jazz-influenced score.
Mercer created the show starting in 2020 with a commission from Cincy Shakes’ New Play Development program. In an interview with CityBeat writer Julie Carpenter, Mercer said, “I wanted to tell a queer story and for the music to be absolutely essential, not fluff songs or a jukebox musical. My mind immediately went to Virginia Woolf.” They picked up and read the author’s unusual novel, Mrs. Dalloway, and “knew immediately this was the one.” Several workshops refined the show; the shutdown of theaters by the worldwide pandemic delayed its arrival on Cincy Shakes’ stage. But it proved to be worth the wait.
Mercer called the show, “a celebration of the beauty of life. There is a lot of comedy in it as well as joy and irreverence. The book is about how the tiny moments of a single day are a lifetime of emotions.” Audiences responded. But is a work like this a one-off or can it have a future? In fact, just a year after its staging, Cincy Shakes has produced a “world premiere cast recording” that will spread awareness of Mercer’s lovely, engaging score. The 16-person cast and 11-musician orchestra came together in 2025 at Cincinnati Public Radio’s new state-of-the-art studio in Evanston to record a cast album across 6-8 sessions between August and November.
The recording had its world premiere on Friday, April 10, at Cincinnati Public Radio’s headquarters where Cincy Shakes held an album release party attended by a hundred or so people who were part of the show’s original audience. Some cast members were also present. Everyone was treated to a live conversation between Mercer (left in the photo above) and Cincy Shakes’ director Sara Clark (right) who staged the 2025 production and was involved in the recording process, led by producer Jeanna Vella. (Vella is Shakes’ director of marketing, but she’s also a musician who played clarinet in the show’s orchestra.) For 45 minutes, Mercer and Clark chatted insightfully about the evolution of the show and the recording, played samples of songs from the album and shared video of the recording sessions, sometimes intercut with video from the actual stage production.
Mercer’s score for Mrs. Dalloway ranges from heartfelt to jaunty, and the recording has been carefully curated to tell the arc of the story whether you know Woolf’s novel or saw the stage production. The recording is now available on an array of music streaming platforms including Apple Music, Spotify and iTunes.
I especially appreciated a pair of songs from early in the show, “Crossing Bond Street,” wonderfully sung with tangible anticipation by Christiana Cole as Clarissa Dalloway, and “Beauty Was Everywhere,” with an emotional rendition by Noah Berry as Septimus Warren Smith. It’s easy to experience the show’s humor in numbers including “Wild Night,” the memory of a rambunctious card game and party, and “Everything Is Great,” which features a pair of frustrated spouses — the nervously talkative Rezia, Septimus’s wife (played by Courtney Lucien) and Clarissa’s shy, introverted husband Richard (played by Byron St. Cyr).
By spreading the music from this entertaining production, the cast recording seems likely to inspire further productions by other theater companies. It’s easy to imagine it as a well-received Off-Broadway show. Time will tell.
P.S. It’s also wonderful to see how Cincinnati Public Radio’s excellent studio is a facility where such sophisticated recording can happen. That’s precisely what CPR had in mind when it envisioned its new facility which opened in Evanston a year ago this month. Cheers to CPR and Cincy Shakes!