Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando (1928) was written as a quasi homage to Vita Sackville West (author, gardener, aristocrat etc)  with whom she was in a relationship. Both women had open marriages to men. Nearly a century later Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation is fresh, lively, funny  – and, of course, very topical. We meet Orlando (Taylor McClaine) several times in different personae over five centuries variously presenting as a young man or a young woman. It’s a piece about time, transformation, sexual ambiguity and “ a great variety of selves.”

Ruhl’s script shifts continually from first person to third so that we never lose the stylistic sense of a story being told by an outsider. And bringing that off requires a great deal of speaking in synch, rapid symbolic costume change and movement round Jermyn Street’s rather awkward playing space. The cast manage it in spades. The faintly jokey physicality is fun and the whole piece dances along at speed so that it never goes off the boil.

Recent graduate from Lir Academy, Dublin and richly red-headed, Taylor McClaine gives us a well nuanced Orlando with plenty of youthful sassiness spliced with wide-eyed wonder and witty grins. Rosalind Lailey, Stanton Wright and Tigger Blaize form a chorus from which all the other roles emerge. All three provide very accomplished voice work and are good at bouncing off each other. The knowing looks between Lailey and Wright when they’re servants is a good moment and Blaize (very good)  has fun as a sex-changing suitor among many other roles. Skye Hallam’s smaller role as Sasha, a Russian princess idolised by Orlando in each incarnation is less successful.

Roly Botha’s sound design and music adds a lot to this lively, energetic production too. We get appropriate music for each era that Orlando lands in.  It underlines “the spirit of the age” which almost becomes a character in its own right  in this sparkling production.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/orlando/

Two friends attend the same school in a deprived Essex seaside town. One leaves for university, gradually finds a different sort of life and settles down with a young woman whose background is more privileged. The other stays and is unhappily sucked ever further into emotional and economic poverty. Tensions build over the eight year  narrative span and there’s a great deal of anger, angst and guilt. It’s hardly an original story although many people will identify with it.

This seventy-minute piece is Jack Condon’s first play (he also plays the confused, disappointed, furious John) for Jawbones, a new company he has set up with Sarah Stacey, who directs. Although it’s a generally pleasing debut some of the writing is laboured especially in the first half hour which includes far too much clunky expositionary dialogue. The “issues” stick out clumsily. It does, however improve as it proceeds.

But the acting is excellent.  Condon stomps about being outrageous and often furious as well as deeply flawed and hurt. As James, Theo Ancient finds calm, reasonableness in his character and we identify with him because John really is difficult to deal with. Yet there’s also a troubled complexity especially in the memorably powerful  final scene when Whitney Kehinde, now his pregnant wife, tries to confront him about his unhappiness  so that they can move on together. She is calm, determined and worried, all of which Kehinde conveys beautifully and the way the two actors bounce of each other at this point packs a real punch.

First published by Sardines:https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/if-destroyed-still-true/

Photo: Taken at The Jack Studio Theatre

A companion piece to Ross McGreggor’s Holst: The Music in the Spheres  to which I awarded five stars in February, Payne is another delight – even though I am not quite as comfortable with physics and astronomy as I am with classical music.

Cecilia Payne (Laurel Marks) was a student of Gustav Holst at St Paul’s Girls’ School. From there she went to Cambridge and from thence to work as a researcher at Harvard. She was a pioneer who broke a great deal of new ground in her field although as the play makes clear she didn’t initially always get the credit for it. Among other things she worked out that stars are made predominantly of hydrogen and helium thereby refuting three thousand years of scientific theory – as Henry Russell (Toby Wynn-Davies) acidly and patronisingly points out to her.

The play is a detailed, intelligent exposition of the routine discrimination against women a century ago and a taut account of one woman’s struggles. Marks is an outstanding actor. She gives us a lumpy, awkward woman with the distorted vowel sounds of her period and class but indefatigably focused on her work. She is very good indeed at evincing the pain and hurt she feels when her character’s work is marginalised and yet her rare smiles light up the stage.

The five other cast members are generally strong and, as before. I was totally convinced by Wynn-Davies as Holst two scenes with whom effectively frame the play. American accents are, however, a bit iffy and although amusing, Alex Stevens makes Harlow Shapley simply too excessive and irritating to be taken seriously as head of department.

Nineteen twenties music links the scenes so that we never forget where we are. Lucy Ioannou as Adelaide Ames helps with that too. At first she seems a fairly frivolous flapper and a stark contrast with Cecilia but she gradually develops into something much deeper and we begin to see her as a serious scientist – with a healthy life/work balance. There is a very beautiful physical theatre/dance scene with her at its centre to symbolise her untimely death and the reactions of her friends and colleagues.

McGreggor, as director, does imaginative things with the gauzy backcloth providied by Odin Corie’s set. Some scenes, evocatively lit, take place beyond it to suggest outdoors or something otherworldly and it acts as screen for occasional projection.