Orlando at the Garrick Theatre

 I read Orlando as a teenager but haven’t been back since.  I remembered it being a feminist treatise but of course revisiting it now, the sexual and gender identity aspects feel just as important.  We tried out some cheap seats in a box, and I was a bit worried that we would have a repeat of the Noises Off debacle back in 2012 when we could only see half the stage.  In fact this turned out to be a tiny box with just the two seats that we could move about, which meant we could lean over if we really wanted to see something tucked away, so it worked out well in the end.  

So, what about the play you ask? Well, it opens with 9 Virginia Woolfs (Wolves?) on stage, a chorus maybe, representing different selves I guess, but it allows for an entertaining dialogue when deciding what should happen to Orlando next.  Having an onstage dresser in the form of Deborah Findlay also gave us a narrator and guide to run alongside the Virginia chorus to keep Orlando and the audience on track.  Emma Corrin who now identifies as non-binary is apt as a boyish and playful Orlando in any gender, playing the role with a very light touch once  they settled down and with a mix of subtle and not so subtle physical reminders of Orlando’s various forms alongside the costume changes. 

The play is only 90 minutes long and so hurtles through the story at a brisk pace, something I always appreciate and the changing times are accentuated by the changes in language forms from Shakespeare to modernity over the course of the play.  For all the references to words and language though, most of Woolf’s language was ditched in favour of getting to the essence of the piece.  I liked the focus at the end on 100 years for freedom which felt right, and brought us right up to date for a novel that is almost 100 years old itself. 

I need to go back to the book now to see how much is in the play, but it felt to the spirit, if not the letter, in asking that human question… who am I and who and what do I love? 

That makes it sound a bit heavy, but it wasn’t, it was a fun evening with plenty of laughs along the way, and to round off the evening, one of my favourite walks across the Thames to Waterloo at the end.