Orlando Court Theatre
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Those who know Woolf primarily from the intense domestic introversion of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse may well be startled at how much fun she has deconstructing the arts of the historian and the biographer here. Getting it all across onstage—particularly given the novel’s scant dialogue—is a challenge only partly met by Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation, and Ruhl makes some cuts fans of the book may find lamentable. Yet both the script and Jessica Thebus’s clever, economical staging for Court Theatre contain many delights. Ruhl’s taste for epigrammatic, seemingly arbitrary whimsy becomes more palatable when wedded to Woolf’s puckish profundities.
Ruhl’s first act focuses on Orlando-as-male, filled with “poetry, romance, folly, youth.” After Queen Elizabeth I whisks him off to court, he falls in love with a beautiful Russian temptress named Sasha, who betrays him. Heartbroken, Orlando seeks adventures in Turkey, where he wakes from a days-long sleep transformed into a woman. The second act follows Lady Orlando’s attempts to balance “the penalties and privileges of her position” as she negotiates the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Ruhl and company have taken on a huge task. That it doesn’t fully succeed is less of a comment on their talent than a tribute to the fierce, omnivorous pen that created Orlando.
