In Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Taylor Mac (right) plays the title character, mysteriously transformed from male to female, and TL Thompson is a sea captain.
Playwright Sarah Ruhl and performance-artist Taylor Mac, both recipients of MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” and past finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, are currently at the Signature Theatre for a revival of Ruhl’s 1998 adaptation of Orlando, the 1928 novel by Virginia Woolf. Mac, who’s playing the title role, is renowned as a dramatist but, on this occasion, serves strictly as an actor.
Sasha (Janice Amaya), an enigmatic Russian princess, flirts with Orlando during the Great Frost of 1608.
In Orlando, Woolf parodied pretensions of 19th-century biographical writing (a bête noire of the novelist and other modernists of the Bloomsbury Group). Born in the age of Shakespeare, Orlando is a would-be poet who grows up in the court of Elizabeth I. Due to the assortment of Norman patricians and less lofty Anglo-Saxons on his family tree, Woolf calls Orlando a “mixture of brown earth and blue blood.” In the novel’s fantasy universe, Orlando—who’s somehow immune to the usual effects of mortality—matures at a slower pace than other humans and survives numerous epochs. The book concludes more than 400 years after its start, by which time age hasn’t managed to wither Orlando beyond early middle age.
Woolf uses Orlando’s outlandish story to ponder the complexity and fragility of human identity, especially gender and sexuality. In a humorous aside near the story’s end, the author comments that “a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have as many as a thousand.” In the most famous passage, Orlando sinks into a trance after a vigorous nocturnal frolic with a woman of pleasure, waking a week later, miraculously transformed—female in body and mind, yet retaining clear recollections of licentious pre-trance experience as a man. Woolf writes: “The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity” [emphasis added]. In that sentence, composed 95 years ago, Woolf deploys the nongendered third-person-plural pronoun, which only now is becoming accepted grammatically for trans and nonbinary individuals.
Nathan Lee Graham (foreground) portrays the elderly Queen Elizabeth I. In the background, Jo Lampert as a family retainer in Orlando’s household. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
In terms of charisma and stage presence, Mac outstrips almost any performer who comes to mind. His presence is engrossing throughout, though his portrayal of Orlando operates largely in a single dimension (a function, perhaps, of the reductive nature of Ruhl’s early-career script, written soon after she graduated from college). Under Will Davis’s direction, Mac shares the spotlight with an ensemble of six engaging stage veterans (Janice Amaya, Nathan Lee Graham, Lisa Kron, Jo Lampert, Rad Pereira, and TL Thompson), who play 17 characters, function as a chorus, and execute skillfully the director’s eye-appealing choreography.
Ruhl’s radically abbreviated account of Orlando’s history is faithful to the novel, so far as it goes, but tells far more than it dramatizes. Her dramaturgy is illustrative of a soliloquizing, partly choral, theatrical style called “story theater,” developed in the late 1960s by Paul Sills, cofounder of Chicago’s Second City.
Chorus Member No. 6: One day, a trifle bored, Orlando wandered through [Queen Elizabeth’s] court … where he saw—
Orlando: Oh! A rather fat, shabby man, with a tankard of ale beside him—
Chorus Member No. 7: And a pen.
Orlando: He … seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down … Was this a poet? Orlando wanted to say, ‘Tell me everything, everything in the whole world!’ For he had the wildest, most absurd ideas about poets … [The poet notices Orlando.] … Orlando, overcome with shyness, darted off.
In performance, such dialogue tends to be monotonous (which is unimaginable of Woolf’s prose on the page). There’s little evident rhyme or reason to what the playwright includes from the novel and what she ignores; and some of what’s missing is vital to understanding Woolf’s nuanced perspective on her protagonist. Davis’s direction and choreography add pep and joy (a noun not often associated with Woolf, though appropriate in connection with Orlando) to the talky dialogue.
Thompson and Lampert as retainers look on as Orlando serves tea to a Romanian archduke (Lisa Kron, left front) who previously masqueraded as a woman.
This revival calls to mind Classics Illustrated, the comic-book series that exposed post–World War II youngsters to the bare bones of literary treasures such as Great Expectations and Ivanhoe. Like those cartoon versions of great books, Davis’s production is visually arresting, with bright colors, rich-looking fabrics, outlandish get-ups, and curious hairdos, courtesy of Arnulfo Maldonado (sets), Oana Botez (costumes), Barbara Samuels (lighting), Brendan Aanes (sound), and the Wig Associates (hair, wigs, and makeup). Audiences wanting to celebrate gender fluidity, queer pride, and society’s newfound respect for trans rights (impossible to have foreseen in Woolf’s lifetime) will likely find this Orlando satisfying—perhaps, at moments, even exhilarating. Those attending out of allegiance to Woolf, not so much.
Signature Theatre’s presentation of Orlando runs through May 12 at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and at 8 p.m. Saturdays; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. For tickets and information, visit signaturetheatre.org or call (212) 967-1913.
Playwright: Sarah Ruhl
Direction & Choreography: Will Davis
Scenic Design: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume Design: Oana Botez
Lighting Design: Barbara Samuels
Sound Design: Brendan Aanes
