A young man wakes up one morning to find he is a woman. Nothing unusual about that in these gender-fluid days. Who am I? we ask.
Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s fantastical, time-travelling picaresque novel, inspired by Vita Sackville-West, her long-term lover, has been adapted for the stage by Neil Bartlett and is directed by Michael Grandage and stars Emma Corrin.
Sounds promising, really promising. And 10,000 tickets at £10 sounds absolutely fantastic.
Orlando, a young nobleman and poet, begins his life at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. In Constantinople at the age of 30 he is transformed into a woman. Orlando lives on, through the Restoration and Victorian eras, taking male and female lovers, remaining ageless, right up to 1928, the year the novel was published, searching all the while for happiness and self-knowledge. Who am I? Who do I love?
Grandage’s production, acted straight through without interval in 80 minutes, has a chorus of 9 Virginia Woollfs (one of them played by a male) and they all play a variety of roles across the four hundred years. The staging has some attractive tableaux.
Orlando has been adapted before and the lead role has been played by Miranda Richardson, Isabelle Huppert and Tilda Swinton. Now it is the turn of Emma Corrin, who had a big success on TV as Princess Diana in The Crown series and as Lady Chatterley.
Corrin brings an appealing gamin personality to the role but the script doesn’t offer her the opportunities. There is an exquisite moment when we see her beautiful naked back.
Deborah Findlay plays a wardrobe mistress/theatre dresser and provides Orlando with his/her period costume changes and makes funny remarks to the audience.
I could have done with less Neil Bartlett and more Virginia Woolf. The novel, in its stream of consciousness and its rich, beautiful and witty prose, is so much better. The stage performance doesn’t do justice to the original and feels incomplete; and, for me at least, it was a big disappointment.
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