

Orlando (stage version)
Neil Bartlett
An adaptation of the “longest and most charming love letter in literature,” written by Virginia Woolf for her lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a theatrical, wild, fantastical trip through space, time and gender.
Orlando’s adventures begin as a young man, when he serves as courtier to Queen Elizabeth.
Through many centuries of living, he becomes a 20th-century woman, trying to sort out her existence.
This fresh stage adaptation from Sarah Ruhl uses narrative and a chorus to enact lyrical, instant and whimsical transformations as Orlando travels through countless epochs.
"Ms. Ruhl, the gifted playwright whose work has been characterized by a mixture of the feminist and the fabulist that finds a natural echo in Orlando, modestly cedes the stage to Woolf in this economical adaptation of Woolf’s 1928 novel... The stage Orlando faithfully recreates the incidents Woolf uses to illustrate her ideas about the fluidity of gender and identity, and the great mysteries of time."
— New York Times
"It all suits the stage like a dream, slippery and fantastical, and Sarah Ruhl’s 10-year old adaptation is a swift precis that never feels filleted as it muses on identity, history and human subjectivity."
— The Guardian
"Ruhl’s script is a jewel."
— Vulture
"[Woolf’s] 1928 novel Orlando, now adapted by Sarah Ruhl in a story-theater style... preserves the writer’s playful cadences and much of her wit."
— The Village Voice
"Simplicity is magical in Orlando. That’s as true for Sarah Ruhl’s lovingly crafted adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s time-bending, gender-shifting novel as it is for Woolf’s mesmerizing prose."
— SF Gate
| Character |
|---|
| Sasha |
| Queen Elizabeth |
| Shakespeare |
| The Archduke/Archduchess |
| Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire |
| Miss Penelope Hartopp |
| A Washerwoman |
| Favilla Clorinda |
| Euphrosyne |
| A Russian Sea-Man |
| Othello |
| Desdemona |
| A Sea Captain |
| A Maid – Grimsditch |
| A Maid – Dupper |
| Salesperson |
| Orlando |
Sarah Ruhl Discusses Orlando
Orlando (Ruhl) is a comedy play written by Sarah Ruhl and published by Samuel French .
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