Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ comes strangely alive

Playwright Sarah Ruhl adapts an unusual novel with style and smarts

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Virginia Woolf's unusually brilliant 1928 novel "Orlando" tells of a noble youth of Tudor times who scarcely ages over the next 300 years, although halfway through the story his gender miraculously changes and Orlando deals with the changing world as a woman.

A pleasure to read, the fanciful novel is not a likely candidate for dramatization, but playwright Sarah Ruhl and director Rebecca Taichman have done well by "Orlando" with their smart, stylish production that opened last week at Classic Stage Company.

Strategically editing Woolf's prose, Ruhl adapts the gossamer material in story-theater fashion in which the performers relate the action and third-person narration in a choral manner as well as act them out. Lightly comic in tone, the gender-bending saga glides along gracefully in Taichman's elegant staging within CSC's three-quarter arena space.

The enchanted quality of the tale is underscored through choreographer Annie-B Parson's lightly stylized movement devised for the five-member company. Designing the lofty space with striking minimalism, Allen Moyer sets out a plot of grass and a few gilt chairs above which a vast gilt-framed mirror is positioned to reflect the action. Christopher Akerlind's lighting is appropriately beautiful and mysterious.

All cropped blond hair and milky skin, Francesca Faridany is a dreamy-eyed Orlando whose spirited ways accommodate the character's evolution from a dashing boy to an uneasy but gradually more confident woman.

The excellent ensemble work of Tom Nelis, Howard Overshown and David Greenspan is dominated by the latter actor who is touching as a spidery Queen Elizabeth and later hilarious as a grotesque Balkans aristocrat. A romantic figure in her red robes as a Russian princess, Annika Boras portrays Orlando's lost love with inscrutable melancholy.

For all of the considerable bewitchery of this production, newcomers to the tale of Orlando may well be bewildered by its bizarre doings, but fans of the novel are likely to find their hero/heroine in fine form.

"Orlando" continues through Oct. 17 at Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St., New York. Call (212) 352-3101 or visit www.classicstage.org.