Orlando (Taylor Mac) has already been living an unusual life as a nobleman in Queen Elizabeth’s court when he suddenly becomes a woman.
“Let biologists and psychologists argue. It is enough for us to state the simple fact: Orlando was a man till the age of thirty, when she became a woman and has remained so ever since.”
So say members of the chorus in “Orlando,” a stage adaptation by Sarah Ruhl of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, which is now being revived at Signature Theater, in what feels like the exact right time by the exact right cast. But the production doesn’t wind up feeling exactly right.
Ruhl wrote her adaptation in 1998; there was an Off-Broadway production of it in 2010. Since then, Woolf’s novel, which Ruhl now calls “a queer classic,” has been taken up by a far more visible transgender community; transgender filmmaker Paul B. Preciado, for example, recently released the movie “Orlando, My Political Biography.” So it feels fitting that the revival would be directed by Will Davis, the transgender artistic director of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and feature seven cast members, four of whom use pronouns other than he/him or she/her, including the extraordinary theater artist Taylor Mac.
There is more resonance when such a cast and creative team deliver Orlando’s observation when newly transitioned – which, like most of Ruhl’s script, is lifted virtually verbatim from Woolf’s novel:
“How odd. When I was a young man, I insisted that women be obedient, chaste and scented. Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires. For women are not…obedient, chaste and scented by nature. They can only attain these graces by tedious discipline. There’s the hairdressing…that alone will take at least an hour of my morning…there’s looking in the looking glass…there’s being chaste year in and year out…. Christ Jesus.”
But “Orlando” is also a rip-roaring tale taking place over five centuries, beginning at age 16, when his youthful beauty attracts Queen Elizabeth (Nathan Lee Graham), who makes him a nobleman of the Court, lavishing on him gifts, a house, and her attention. In Court, he encounters “a rather fat, shabby man” – this was Shakespeare – falls in and out of love with a series of ladies, and has a passionate affair with a Russian princess Sasha (Janice Amaya), who abandons him as the winter thaw allows her ship to leave London and return to Moscow. And this is just in the 16th century, mind you. Over the centuries, Orlando’s adventures include an unnervingly lustful encounter with an archduchess who, once Orlando transitions to female, reveals himself as an archduke (Lisa Kron), a man, Marmaduke (Rad Pereira), whom Orlando mistakes for a woman because “you have a passion for–peppermints, and you listen” –and winds up marrying him.
The episodic adventures should be delightful, but they are instead removed and remote, for a compound of reasons. Ruhl’s script relies on narration rather than dialogue (of which there is admittedly relatively little in Woolf’s novel.) Six of the cast members (all but Mac) spend most of their time not as characters but as chorus members. They divvy up their exposition, often one single line after another. And they are often huddled together on a stage that is essentially bare – which results in a vastness that swallows up their lines.
Woolf’s novel is a complicated swirl that couldn’t possibly be captured in its entirety on a stage; it’s in part, for example, an elaborate spoof of a conventionally turgid biography. It’s also said to be inspired by Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, whose son called it “the longest and most charming love letter in literature.” But it’s also a celebration of the human body, which could be captured on stage. Orlando becomes a woman after falling into a deep week-long sleep while residing in Constantinople during a battle with the Turks, and then, the chorus explains:
Chorus: He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, while the trumpets pealed out:
The Queen: Truth!
Truth!
Truth!
Chorus: We have no choice but to confess… he was a woman.
In the 2010 Off-Broadway production, the performer portraying Orlando, at this moment appeared literally in complete nakedness, and indisputably female.
In the current production, for this – and every other transition — Mac goes off stage, and comes back in a new costume. I’m not suggesting that Mac should go naked. But, this is the theater artist who made a point, in both “A 24 Decade History of Popular Music” and more recently “Bark of Millions“ of changing costumes in front of the audience. The choice to transition off-stage turns “Orlando” into a kind of pageant of designer Oana Botez’s colorful costumes. The costumes for Mac do in and of themselves tell an awesome story of change. But keeping the moments of change off-stage seems at cross-purposes to what surely must be a main reason this team wanted to bring us Virginia Woolf.
Orlando
Signature through May 12
Running time: One hour and 40 minutes, including intermission
Tickets: $59 – $119
Written by Sarah Ruhl based on Virginia Woolf’s novel
Directed and choreographed by Will Davis
Scenic design by Arnulfo Maldonado, costume design by Oana Botez, lighting design by Barbara Samuels, sound design and composition by Brendan Aanes, intimacy coordinator Ann C. James
Cast: Taylor Mac as Orlando, Janice Amaya as Sasha and chorus, Nathan Lee Graham as Queen Elizabeth and chorus, Lisa Kron as archduchess, archduke, chorus,Jo Lampert as Grimsditch and chorus, Rad Pereira as Marmaduke and chorus, and TL Thompson as sea captain and chorus.
