American playwright Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando comes to the Sydney stage, starring Jacqueline McKenzie as the epoch-hopping, androgynous hero. Virginia Woolf’s novel was published in the same year that women won equal voting rights in the United Kingdom and has been marked as a feminist classic.
Set in the court of Elizabeth I in the 16th century, a young nobleman Orlando catches the eye of the Queen, who promises to give him a tract of land and a castle if he follows her one command: “Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old”.
Orlando’s story unfolds amid Russian beauties and Romanian aristocrats, until it all changes after one night of debauchery in Constantinople, where he wakes as a woman. In Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation, directed by Sarah Goodes, Orlando travels from the 16th to the 20th century to find his (or her) true self. John Gaden stars as Queen Elizabeth I in the gender-bending adventure through the ages.
Type of Event: Theatre
Venue: Drama Theatre
Sydney Opera House
Bennelong Point
Sydney NSW 2000
Date: from 14 November to 19 December 2015
Price: from $58
Website: Sydney Theatre Company
Telephone: (02) 9250 7111
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