Extraordinary Women review – madcap musical of bohemian Bloomsbury bed-hopping

Overseeing mortal intrigues … from left, Jasmine Kerr, Amira Matthews, Sophie Louise Dann and Monique Young in Extraordinary Women at Jermyn Street theatre, London. Photograph: Steve Gregson

Compton Mackenzie’s lesbian novel was published in the same year as two other canonical queer tomes that eclipsed it: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.

Here, it is adapted into an arch musical comedy by Sarah Travis (score) and Richard Stirling (lyrics). It feels befitting of Mackenzie’s rather madcap interwar story featuring a Bloomsbury-style group of lesbians on the fictional island of Sirene.