“The whole show has a fey enchantment to it that will appeal to many, even if the main character remains an enigma”
In this adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s uncategorizable novel Orlando, adaptor Neil Bartlett has taken the unusual step of putting the author on stage. Not content to offer us just one Virginia Woolf though, he offers us nine. It’s a clever way to tip off the audience that Orlando is no ordinary biography of an Elizabethan young man, and that his creator is no ordinary writer. In this joint production between Michael Grandage and Nimax Theatres at the Garrick Theatre, audiences have the opportunity to see Emma Corrin (fresh from her success on TV in The Crown) on stage as the hero/heroine Orlando. Corrin is surrounded by a cast of performers who shift from character to character, gender to gender, and age to age. They are all as chameleon like as the eponymous character in Woolf’s classic novel.
Wait a minute, I hear you say, hero/heroine Orlando? What does that mean? For those who haven’t read Woolf’s Orlando, the story goes something like this. An aristocratic young man, born in 1581 at the height of the Elizabethan Age, wakes up to find he has transformed from male into female after a particularly hard night partying in Istanbul where he is the English Ambassador to the Turkish Court. Lady Orlando, as s/he now becomes, returns to England to find at first hand, all the difficulties of living while female. From inheritances she cannot claim; clothes she cannot wear, and a husband that she must take, Lady Orlando struggles through the Georgian, Victorian and finally, early twentieth century, asking the unanswerable: Who Am I? Did I mention that Orlando is also a time traveller, and ages only twenty years in four centuries? What Virginia Woolf has given us in Orlando is a novel that isn’t science fiction, or a biography. Written in 1928, it is, instead, a thinly disguised celebration of her lover, Vita Sackville-West, and part of a series of revolutionary writings on a woman’s right to self-expression and self-determination. What makes it revolutionary, even today, is that Woolf sees these aims through the eyes of a human who can experience life through the perspective of shifting gender.
Adaptor Neil Bartlett has set himself a complex and challenging task with Orlando. First there is Woolf’s novelistic prose style and the lavish descriptions, as Orlando is not just a courtier, but a poet. How do you transfer Woolf’s prose style to the dramatic language of the theatre? To his credit, Bartlett gets around the problem by bringing on all those Virginias to make Orlando’s case for him/her. Corrin, as Orlando, is an actor up to the challenge of making Orlando come alive on stage. Corrin’s portrayal of Orlando’s innocence and naivety contrast sympathetically with the ever changing cast of characters who attempt to use Orlando for their own ends. They fail because Orlando is outside their experience of humans. And it is this, paradoxically, that makes the production ultimately unsatisfying. It’s because no one, including Orlando, has a really good answer to the question “Who Am I?” Orlando becomes a narrative, rather than a drama, relying heavily on quotes from Woolf, Shakespeare, Pope, and others, to create settings, rather than a plot.
Bartlett shows his theatrical skills in Orlando not so much as a playwright, but in his previous experience as a director. It is in direction that this production really sparkles. And as a director, Michael Grandage’s experience and artistry shows in the way he gathers together his talented cast of eleven, and gives them the space to shine in a variety of roles on a bare bones stage. The stage is populated from time to time with beds, backdrops, and costume racks. (Set and costume design by Peter McIntosh). Just enough to set the scene among a host of short scenes as the centuries pass. Deborah Findlay as Mrs Grimsditch is the one constant in Orlando’s life, mysteriously appearing at random moments to advise on everything from appropriate dress to the date. She also provides a quick sketch of historical events to bring young Orlando (and the audience) up to speed. Findlay’s performance is both endearing and accessible—allowing everyone to anchor themselves among the shifting seas of Woolf’s imagination. The whole show has a fey enchantment to it that will appeal to many, even if the main character remains an enigma.
There are lots of theatrical moments in this production of Orlando, and the Garrick Theatre is the perfect space to show them off. There’s a lot of sly humour in the dialogue as well. This show is a good choice if you’re looking for something different from the usual ballet and pantomime offerings this holiday season. If you’re intrigued by the idea of Virginia Woolf reinterpreted for the stage, why not give Orlando a chance?
“… many hilarious scenes, played out with brittle but unbreakable comic timing by Aidan Turner”
When “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” premiered in 2001 it was considered quite dangerously close to the bone. The peace agreement was only three years old and Martin McDonagh’s dark play struck a chord. Michael Grandage’s revival, at a time when the Troubles seem assigned to history, has lost none of the urgency. If anything, its resonance is more acute than ever in today’s climate.
At its centre, after one has waded through the blood and gore, is the story of Mad Padraic, a terrorist so brutal he’s been thrown out of the IRA. He’s certainly done the rounds – tortured drug dealers, bombed chip shops and drawn up his own list of ‘valid targets’ (a phrase often used by the IRA to justify its murders). Yet, he has a soft spot for his cat, ‘Wee Thomas’. The first time we meet Padraic he is pulling off the toenails of small time crook James (Brian Martin) whose crime is selling marijuana to schoolkids. Interrupted by a phone call from his dad to tell him his beloved cat is sick, he races home to Inishmore to comfort the creature. This is one of many hilarious scenes, played out with brittle but unbreakable comic timing by Aidan Turner. Wearing a blood spattered white vest throughout, his appetite for firing bullets matches the quick-fire delivery of McDonagh’s dialogue.
At times verging on farce, the play is an obvious satirical attack on Irish terrorism that still has bite twenty years after the Good Friday agreement. McDonagh gets to the heart of the issue while being careful to criticise both sides: many of the jokes, at the expense of the IRA, refer to actual atrocities, yet he also refers to Bloody Sunday in which the British Army opened fire on a Civil Rights march, killing over a dozen unarmed civilians. But far from belittling historical fact, turning it into comedy is a far more effective way of urging an audience to question the issues raised.
The comic and the horrific are perfectly balanced in Grandage’s production. It is Pythonesque to the extreme as the laughs pile up thicker than the blood and guts on stage. The blood is thicker than the plot, though. However, there is a comforting predictability to events which lets the audience relax and enjoy the performances. It is no spoiler to reveal that Padraic’s cat is not just sick, but stone-cold dead. Fearful of the reaction this would spark, the comic duo of Donny and Davey (Denis Conway and Chris Walley) try to replace it with another cat, smearing it with boot polish to disguise it as the real thing. This, more than any political ideal, is what precipitates the chaos and Padraic’s trigger-happy finger.
Far from being a vehicle for Turner, this is an ensemble piece with equally strong performances from the supporting cast (not quite upstaged by the dead cats), especially Charlie Murphy as the love interest who lends a spirited, gamine lunacy to her character. Will Irvine, Julian Moore-Cook and Daryl McCormack, as the homicidal gunmen intent on annihilating Padraic, are wonderfully absurd, recalling the Marx Brothers trio while arguing over the accuracy of Karl Marx quotes.
It is a violent play, but one that is clearly anti-violence. It definitely has a screw loose, but it is as tight as a hard-rock rhythm section; the banter ricocheting off the walls with the precision of a trained sniper. This is a high-spirited production which, taken in the spirit intended, is a sheer delight. Black comedy has never been so bright.
