Orlando

Virginia Woolf’s radical 1928 novel about a time traveling androgynous youth was stronger on whimsy than politics and it’s a good fit to be adapted by the great theater maker Neil Bartlett, a pioneer of gay culture in the UK. Known for his vividly theatrical works he’s a master of grand tableaux, and this is a series of them. In less gifted hands it could have come across as didactic, but producer/director Michael Grandage and Bartlett have together fashioned a wonderfully impish theatrical soufflé. It’s also one that makes you think. It makes for 90 minutes of perfectly honed theater.

The sexual politics, with its theme of gender fluidity, are very de nos jours, and here Grandage has hit on some inspired casting by securing a hot new star Emma Corrin (The Crown, Lady Chatterley etc), who is non-binary, and was very drawn to the material.

Corrin, as Orlando, drifts undefeated through the ages with a personality that flits between cocky boyishness and languid ingénue. Born a boy in the privileged fringes of the Elizabethan court, he finds favor with the Queen (Lucy Briers), then gets sent as Ambassador to Constantinople, where, after a particularly good night out, ‘he’ wakes up female. Oh, and s/he never ages.

‘She’ returns to London and Woolf uses to this explore the limitations imposed by gender down the centuries. ‘She’ next appears in the Restoration world and then in Regency London, both of which, interestingly, give her a lot of latitude, but then hits up against the Victorian era (which Woolf despised), where amidst the bonnets and teacups and prudery, she suffers most, and even marries. It ends in 1928 when the novel was written and women just had just secured the vote.

It opens with a chorus of nine narrators, all identically dressed as the later, dowdier, Woolf and the great ensemble cast do sterling work throughout, doubling and tripling up on roles. It all has the fun of the dressing up box and Bartlett’s dialogue is infused with witty anachronisms referencing everything from Some Like It Hot to Cabaret but it’s with a wink and not labored.

Peter McIntosh’s beautiful sets and costumes are both spare and inspired, instantly conjuring up each passing era where a high sheath of plush scarlet frames Queen Elizabeth’s grand entrance, or we’re plunged in to fustiness of Victorian wallpaper.

Linking it all is Deborah Findley who steals the show as Mrs Grimsditch, a dry as dust Cockney, who parades on with a clothes rack and serves as Orlando’s Dresser/maid/confidante. In asides to the audience, she sets us right on our history and is particularly hilarious in the Victorian scenes.

At the center of it all though is Corrin, always heartfelt, very modern yet not unbalancing the piece, totally engaging and utterly charismatic – a true star.

Woolf, very presciently, ended the novel with the wonderful advice “If you can just hold on another hundred years. If we can just acquire the habit of freedom”. At a time when, after having achieved those freedoms (at least in the West), they’re now in jeopardy again it is sobering to hear, and the piece does end on a down note. Along the way however it is an utterly theatrical pleasure which illuminates the novel and is a loving tribute by Grandage, Bartlett and Corrin.

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