Francesca Faridany, Tom Nelis By Lauren Yarger
Annie-B Parson’s choreography and director Rebecca Taichman’s attention to detail combine with playwright Sarah Ruhl’s lyrical language to create a mesmerizingly beautiful Classic Stage Company staging of Orlando, the tale of an Elizabethan man who wakes up one day to find himself a woman.
Orlando (Francesca Faridany) enjoys his existence as a courtly man’s man (with very shapely legs), favorite of Queen Elizabeth (a delightfully humorous David Greenspan) and lover of the beautiful Russian princess Sasha (Annika Boras) until he is pursued by a relentless, amorous archduchess (also Greenspan) and requests a transfer to Constantinople. There, he falls into a deep sleep and when he awakes at the age of 30, he discovers to his amazement that he now indwells the body of a woman.
Realizing she can no longer swear, sword fight or do other fun things accepted as normal behavior for men, Orlando learns to adjust, discovering that just moving around in dresses with hoops and farthingales can be challenge enough. She takes a husband, continues to yearn for Sasha and struggles to discover how to survive in her new skin. She lives into the 19th and 20th centuries searching for words to finish the poem she started as a young man hundreds of years ago.
The bizarre tale, adapted from the Virginia Woolf novel, is more a study of self discovery than advocacy for transgender acceptance. A good amount of humor helps keep the story light, as do designer Anita Yavich’s clever costumes which help Greenspan make his quick transitions (Queen Elizabeth’s dress floats down and fastens about him). Tom Nelis and Howard Overshown round out the ensemble helping to narrate the story and personifying Othello, a ship’s captain, Orlando’s husband and other characters along the way.
The production, set to beautiful movement by Parson, is a pleasure to watch (except for an unnecessary unveiling of Faridany’s nude body to prove that she has changed into a woman. Proof of her manhood might have been more compelling, but also completely unnecessary).
Original sound and music design by Christian Frederickson and Ryan Rumery complete the mood, enhanced by Allen Moyer’s simple block of grass transformed from time to time by flowing materials to nice effect below a gilded mirror framing the action from above, almost like a window into the parallel world in which Orlando finds him/herself.
Orlando is surprisingly entertaining and moving. It runs through Oct. 17 at CSC, 136 east 13th St., NYC. Tickets are available by visiting http://www.classicstage,org/.
Christians might also like to know:
• Two women actors kiss
• Nudity
• Lord’s name taken in vain
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