Near the beginning of Neil Bartlett’s new adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the housekeeper Mrs. Grimsditch (a tartly funny Deborah Findlay) addresses the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen—sorry, everyone—”
And so begins a witty celebration of gender fluidity and the exploration of self.
For those unfamiliar with the book, Orlando is a pseudo-biography recounting the adventures of a young nobleman born during the reign of Elizabeth I, who somehow lives on to the present day. And who wakes up one morning in the late 17th century to find himself changed into a woman.
Woolf dedicated the book to Vita Sackville-West (“the longest and most charming love letter in literature,” writes Sackville-West’s son), and Orlando the character is transparently based on Woolf’s bisexual lover.
The prescience of this 1928 novel is astonishing. How is it that Woolf, born in the Victorian era, could play so freely with gender identity? How, as Alison Bechdel has put it, was she able to “[invent] her way into the future?”
Orlando has been adapted for stage and screen before—which is for me something of a mystery. Is it the fantastic plot that drives this novel or is it Woolf’s sly authorial voice? For me, it’s the voice, and how can one replicate that voice on stage?
Sally Potter’s 1992 film was lovely to look at but it didn’t seem to me to offer much else—other than (no small pleasure) Tilda Swinton’s turn as the shape-shifting hero/heroine.
Neil Bartlett’s new version finds its own way in by introducing a chorus of Virginia Woolfs to help tell the story. These nine Virginias—played by a cast of diverse ages, genders and races, but identically attired in sensible shoes, long skirts and cardigans—hover attentively about Orlando and think through his/her/their story as it proceeds.
And disappear periodically to come back as characters in Orlando’s fantastic history: Queen Elizabeth, the Archduchess Harriet/Archduke Harry, naval officers, prostitutes and the like.
It seems that it’s not just Orlando trying to answer the question “Who am I?” Virginia Woolf herself tries on multiple identities throughout the play as well—just as we ourselves do vicariously as we watch.
Orlando (a radiant Emma Corrin, who now identifies as non-binary) begins as a rather callow boy and grows in depth of understanding over the centuries, particularly after his mysterious transformation into a woman while an ambassador to Constantinople. The centuries fly by—a little too fast for my taste. Bartlett supplies plenty of wit, but I missed Woolf’s tart historical observations.
Still, the pleasures are many, particularly as the 19th century descends. The Virginias all pull teacups from their bags, Mrs. Grimditch picks up her knitting, and Orlando finds herself mysteriously confined to bed. When she complains that she can no longer feel her brain, Mrs. Grimditch assures her that thinking “is not really the done thing just now, for a woman.”
And the real pleasure comes as we see Orlando grow in understanding of herself as she reaches the present moment. The play ends as she strides confidently into the light, having grown into the self she has struggled to inhabit and understand over the centuries.
Bartlett notes in his introduction to the play that Woolf had a career-long project of “trying to work out how one might use writing to turn the world upside down, and thus to make it a better place for all of us to live in.”
A play that does this while it delights and celebrates our life-long project of building our selfhood—what’s not to like?
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