ORLANDO

The Garrick Theatre is one that, I’m sure many will remark, found its footing on the West End with productions of melodrama. Eventually, it evened out, somewhat, further down the line, into one known for comedy, light-heartedness, and, more recently, showcasing works that push the boundaries for the hoity-toity theatre elite. It’s no surprise then, that Neil Bartlett and Michael Grandidge’s rehashing of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando was to find its home here.

Orlando, for Woolf, is an outlier. For the most part, it seems to fit within the general construction of her narratives –a flagrant and modernist representation of the self, and all of the questions that come with defining exactly that. However, where her other seminal works like Mrs Dalloway or To The Lighthouse concern themselves with a similar excavation, they are very much rooted in the real, in a true representation of the world so that the complex metaphor of feeling can sit comfortably and be palatable for those early 20th century audiences. Orlando doesn’t.

Any literature connoisseur, or Woolf scholar will be sure to know the context. The novel is inspired by the intrepid and turbulent family history of Virginia Woolf’s close friend and lover, Vita SackvilleWest, and the electric, defiant nature of her personality. It’s within these pages that Woolf herself navigates her own identity against Sackville-West’s, trying to understand, as a child of the Victorian era, what it means to love another woman, to be comfortable in oneself, to comprehend existing as something, as someone, who cannot exist.

And it’s through a deep understanding and respect of this context that Barlett and Grandidge’s production is able to thrive. Not only does it do justice to the pages of the text, no, it breathes such a life into the very enigma of Virginia Woolf too.

Interwoven into the very space of the stage is a cacophony of Woolfs. Wrapped in delicate knitwear and crowned with her familiar hairstyle, the company of actors is varied between genders, races, and ages, each portraying the author with a succinct synchronicity that handles the internal debates of a writer's quandary.

As their protagonist adventures through, we’re invited to gaze inside the inner dialogues of Woolf, as these different –though all together, same – versions of her, guide Orlando on the quest of life. We’re privy to the moments of doubt, of indignation, of vindication, that Woolf experiences – as Orlando, in all of their confounding existence, begins to take on a life of their own. As Orlando battles for their own sense of understanding, we feel as though we’re witnessing some swordfight of syntax, as the Virginias attempt to make reason behind the unreasonable. Who does Orlando love? When and where is Orlando? Who is Orlando?

Emma Corrin is a triumph. It’s almost predictable to declare; one of the most exciting actors of now, who settled into the zeitgeist through their portrayal of Lady Diana Spencer in Netflix’s much lauded The Crown. There’s a charisma to Corrin that one struggles to see most anywhere else. They possess a playfulness that remains grounded in a heavy understanding of drama – a perfect casting then, one could regard, for the role that requires a believable teenage boy, a weighted heartbroken man, and a confounded woman.

From their very first arrival on-stage, they’re captivating to watch, moving with the comfort and control of a maestro at their very best. And as the story turns, as Orlando breaks and moulds and twists and changes with the conduction of the Virginias, Corrin is relentless in their effortless adaptability.

Virginia Woolf’s works are now so entwined with our culture, with our British literary canon, that, often, adaptations can feel like a worn t-shirt, one that has lost its own structure, faded. Comfortable, but altogether too familiar. That isn’t a problem here. Orlando finds new solace in much read words, resurrects what should be tired, and, most of all, still feels fresh and relevant so many decades after Woolf first put that excitable teenage boy to paper.

@emmalouisecorrin @orlandowestend