Byzantium Productions’ Orlando features two incredible actors – one male, one female – alternating in the leading role. We reviewed both of them.
Lily McIlwain enjoys Dominic Applewhite’s “masterful” take on the eponymous role.
★★★★☆
Four Stars
There were several layers to the feeling of trepidation with which I approached this production of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. To begin with, dramatizing Woolf just seems in many ways like a giant literary oxymoron; a play, in which things by necessity must happen one event after another, just doesn’t seem like the perfect fit for the works of an author who spent the greater part of her writing career trying to escape the constraints of linear time. Secondly, I wouldn’t say I’ve quite surfaced from my state of post-Prelims not-okayness, meaning most mentions of Woolf are enough to bring up vivid flashbacks of wandering up and down outside the M&S in Summertown attempting to learn notes on the aforementioned concepts (English freshers, you’ve got it all to look forward to). It was a relief, then, that this enthusiastic production neither butchered the work of one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists (I apologise for the note of surprise) nor sent me screaming from the auditorium in a fit of no-longer-dormant post-exam fear; though it took its time to find its feet, this Orlando developed into a personal, thought-provoking, and profoundly moving piece of student theatre.
The play doesn’t have what you’d call a normal plotline to work with. Woolf’s semi-biographical novel centres on a young man, Orlando, whose life spans over three hundred years – oh, and, around the age of thirty, one day wakes up as a woman. This conceit forms the framework of Woolf’s celebrated exploration of how we construct our gender identity, a theme given fresh vigour by an astonishing performance by Dom Applewhite in the androgynous central role. Applewhite’s masterful interpretation ensured that the sudden gender change appeared neither ridiculous nor inexplicable – he perfectly captured the sense of the constant inner self running underneath the restrictions and expectations placed upon the outside body. It would have been a delight to have seen him in the role of Queen Elizabeth I, played tonight by Gráinne O’Mahony – the nuanced performances from both assure me that the play will hold its own with either configuration of actors.
Whilst this may be more to do with the subject matter, or the script drawn from Woolf’s prose, I have to admit that I didn’t click with the play from the very beginning. The opening’s highly stylized melodrama delivered by the onstage chorus just wasn’t the most welcoming entrance, and the cast appeared to move less organically together than they would later in the play (though this may have been as a result of understandable opening-night awkwardness). The production gathered pace and cohesion, though, with the chorus themselves playing a vital part in holding together a storyline that doesn’t exactly welcome dramatic staging. There were some exquisite moments from its individual members – the jealous attempts at attention-seeking by Orlando’s betrothed, Euphrosyne, drew well-deserved belly-laughs from the audience, while the scene in which the female Orlando is dressed for the nineteenth century was unexpectedly a comic highlight of the play, thanks to a jazz hands-infused turn by Benedict Morrison which was more than a little reminiscent of 30 Rock’s Kenneth (and for clarification, this is a very good thing).
Orlando’s transition to female marked the point at which the performance hit its stride, with the cast really starting to give body to the questions and deeper meanings raised by Woolf’s prose. It is a testament to both her and this well-chosen group of actors that the play feels like it could have been written yesterday; the way that Orlando comes to realise what is and is not appropriate to each gender feels astonishingly relevant to an era increasingly adopting an intersectional feminism alert to constructed gender roles (and their resultant impact on an individual’s sexuality). I found the ending of the play strangely disappointing (it seemed to just – well, finish) but this was made up for by the powerful preceding scenes; though not perfect, standout individual performances ensured this production of Orlando was one that stayed with me long after the (metaphorical) curtain went down.
Imogen Lester finds Gráinne O’Mahony’s take on the androgynous protagonist “an absolute joy to behold”.
★★★★☆
Four Stars
“Strength, grace, romance, folly, poetry, youth.” A wizened, stiff Queen Elizabeth I tells of the bright-eyed and whimsical young Orlando, the eponymous hero of Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia’s Woolf’s 1928 novel. She also unknowingly perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Byzantium Productions’ take on this rip-roaring rollercoaster ride through five centuries, numerous cultures and the hero (and later, heroine’s) constantly fluctuating identities. The production delivers a constant sense of precariousness from its ever-changing setting and drastically evolving characterisation, ensuring the audience cannot help but be swept up in the sheer chaos and pace of this time-travelling, subversive romp. Orlando is riotous fun and unfalteringly erratic; deftly interweaving moments of self-reflexive comedy and the tragedy which arises from the protagonist’s lost love, deception, crises of identity and the fragmentation of the self to form a gloriously diverse whole, which is somehow unified in its oppositions.
The Keble O’Reilly is immediately infiltrated by Orlando’s penetrating, dream-like quality, both mesmerising and unnerving, with the chorus, dressed from head-to-toe in white, making their entrance as a video of a germinating seed plays out behind them. This is well-executed, and neatly establishes the motif of evolution which the play seeks to portray. The set is stark and minimal; everything enshrouded in blank, white linen – stripped back, but to good effect, allowing the actors’ talents to shine through. Gráinne O’Mahony is an absolute joy to behold in the title role; her portrayal of the young Orlando with a lust for life and boyish wiles moving seamlessly to all-consuming ennui and raw emotion at the drop of a hat, as her character is duped by Florence Brady’s enigmatic and insincere Sasha. Her strained exchanges with Femi Nylander’s maniacal, infatuated Archduke over tea are situational comedy at its finest; exuding disbelief and mounting frustration.
Overall, the cast’s performances are wonderfully nuanced and fluid, which make the devastating moments of stasis all the more arresting. The chorus prove themselves dynamic and versatile, attacking the fleeting appearances of secondary characters for which they are responsible with gleeful gusto, from gurning, grimacing passers-by as Sasha and Orlando make their entrance to the carnival to Orlando’s jilted lovers and even forming parts of the set themselves.
The closing minutes have a tendency to feel confused at times, although the cast deliver with all their might until the very last, the denouement seems rather abrupt. As the lights dim and Orlando’s final words: “I’m about to understand” ring in the air, the intended closure is replaced by a sense of incompletion. Nevertheless, this ultimately encapsulates what Orlando is: transient, ambiguous, complex, but a production that will no doubt be in the minds of the audience long after they leave the theatre.
