The eminent twentieth century British novelist Virginia Woolf wrote her prose exploration into themes of gender identity in 1928, almost one hundred years ago. The nuanced sustained loveliness, and sheer charm, of the sentiment and style of her novel kept it under the censor’s gaze, a remarkable feat for its time, and enabled it to go on to be a groundbreaking statement of social mores as well as a literary masterpiece.
It is always interesting how novels adapt to stage – as well as film. The last three plays at Belvoir comprise adaptations of novels, and medial form proves the strength and finally limitation of each show. The task of adaptation necessarily involves efficiency, and inevitably much is lost, and much altered. This year’s musical production of Lord of the Rings proved the strengths and perils of staging large prose narratives.
Like all Woolf’s work, ORLANDO is highly experimental, and indeed brilliant in how it uses time lapses of its main character – at first seen as a male courtier (Shannen Alyce Quan) with Elizabeth 1 – to explore sexual changes and gender. The open texture of Woolf’s seminal work invites experimental embellishment almost as an act of retrospective homage.
ORLANDO as theatre uses mixed genres of cabaret, revue, drama, discourse, comedy, burlesque, and dance, using Woolf as a platform for what becomes a celebration of social change since the time of Woolf. The imminent danger that confronted Woolf, writing a covert love letter to her friend Vita Sackville-West, are dissipated by confidence shared widely by the opening night’s audience.
ORLANDO as theatre performs to a captive audience, direct and bold. For Woolf all she wrote was new – in Orlando as theatre there is no or little new content, more jouissance of progress made over the past 100 years, and declamation of ideology well known now in the public sphere. How much of its text is derived and how much added; is the ending with its promenade of inner city culture actually in the novel, along with its jarring music?
The performance is as much a party, as it is a drama. As such it succeeds well, with entirely pleasant period dancing and play (Shannon Burns), a feast of costuming (Ella Butler), and some stunning lighting (Nick Schlieper) and staging effects and images (David Fleischer) . Different actors take turns to play Orlando – Quan, Janet Anderson, Zarif and Nic Prior – and staging shrewdly illustrates “landscapes” of successive centuries.
Belvoir has invested in LED projection, and Orlando demonstrates a refinement in design quite different to previous productions using the same technology. There were floating layers of coloured shadows shaped by characters’ costume, appearance and posture. This was pleasant overall, although sometimes random and even distracting. The experimental nature of the adapted script allowed for and invited a level of abstract design, which paid off handsomely with the sombre Victorian expression of morality and marriage. The brash noise of modernity at the ending was less effective. The show is performed by a trans or non binary cast – I am unsure how requisite this is for Woolf’s vision, but without doubt the resulting performing quality was very good.
Overall a loving and playful homage to a great literary work and writer, which perhaps stretches adaptation unnecessarily beyond the boundaries of its source material.
Virginia Woolf’s ORLANDO, as adapted by Elsie Yager and Carissa Licciardello, directed by Carissa Licciardello, is playing upstairs at Belvoir Street until 28th September 2025.
Production photography Nic Prior
