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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

Orlando review – make a date for Virginia Woolf’s puckish time traveller

Childlike spirit of make-believe … Tigger Blaize (Chorus), Skye Hallam (Sasha), Taylor McClaine (Orlando), Stanton Wright (Chorus) and Rosalind Lailey (Chorus) in Orlando.
Childlike spirit of make-believe … Tigger Blaize (Chorus), Skye Hallam (Sasha), Taylor McClaine (Orlando), Stanton Wright (Chorus) and Rosalind Lailey (Chorus) in Orlando. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

A list of pronouns for each cast and creative member in this production arrives before opening night. It tells us that Taylor McClaine, the actor playing the show’s titular character, uses they/them, which feels apt for an adaptation of a story about gender fluidity from 1928.

Orlando reminds us that the idea of multiple selves is not a modern invention. Virginia Woolf’s hero who turns into a heroine during the story is also a time traveller. Woolf’s thrilling fantasy of liberation from time and gender constraints begins in the Elizabethan age and ends in the 20th century, Orlando voyaging through it rakishly, having affairs and heartbreaks along the way.

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