nothin Orlando’s Too Outlandish | New Haven Independent

Orlando’s Too Outlandish

Andrea H. Berman Photos

Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s 1928 gender-shifting novel adapted by Sarah Ruhl, is given an unnecessarily arch staging by the Yale Summer Cabaret.

The play runs now through Aug. 15.

Regular followers of Sarah Ruhl — and it’s easy to be one of those in Connecticut, where nearly all her plays have had noteworthy productions, including a few Yale Rep world premieres — know there’s a big difference between Ruhl’s own plays and her adaptations of the works of others. In her original works, she plays fast and loose with time and space, creating dreamscapes that offer endless surprises. In her adaptations, she can be respectful to a fault, becoming a stickler for chronological plot structure, straightforward narrative, and a certain deliberate distancing of the action, so that the writer’s literary tone is somehow always in the picture.

In the case of Orlando, though, it works. Woolf’s story, which Ruhl tells in a pace and tone as similar to the novel as possible, concerns a young man named Orlando who, after a series of remarkable coming-of-age adventures, finds that he has transformed into a woman. The story seems at times breathtakingly contemporary in its acceptance of transgender issues. It also reinforces old sexist and classist social stereotypes. The refreshing bits continually clash with the retro ones. Ultimately, though, Orlando is about self-examination, self-exploration, opening oneself up to others, and finding oneself. Ruhl’s deft understanding makes for a natural bond with Woolf’s text.

The seven-person ensemble of the Yale Summer Cabaret company, however, unfortunately uses Orlando mainly as an exercise in mocking age-old adventure fiction styles. The playing style of the Summer Cab’s rendition is what theatergoers of a certain age will recognize as Paul Sills’ Story Theater. The performers act as both the narrators and their subjects of the narrator’s story, sometimes at the same time, describing their actions and reactions in the third person while they act them out in the first. It’s a time-honored dramatic format, but in this case it’s not deep or subtle enough to contain Woolf (and Ruhl)’s extraordinary tale, which is as emotionally resonant as it can be fantastical. Holdren and the cast — all of whom have shown remarkable range and astute teamwork throughout the summer — have found a uniform tone that involves exaggerated comic-European accents, grand gestures, and 19th-century melodramatic derring-do. It gets exhausting watching them try to punch up the not-necessarily-funny moments in every scene. It also gets tiring after a while, and this is a leisurely paced, chronologically arranged show that literally spans centuries. The frisky performances detract from the plot, and without more nuanced performances that bring out the romance and gentler elements in Orlando, the plot is the main motivating force of the evening. It’s hard not to wish this show was over long before it is.

As Orlando, Elizabeth Stahlmann is the only performer to play one single role throughout the whole play (and even she is required to change genders and voices within that role). She tries valiantly to maintain a central heroic presence, but is undone by the upstaging antics of the ensemble, some of whose preening silly-voiced caricatures are downright painful to watch.

That said, some of the images created by the undoubtedly clever cast and director can be bracing. Ruhl’s plays — originals or adapted — respond equally well to small and large design budgets. Sara Holdren, artistic director of this whole summer’s Yale Summer Cabaret season and the director of the season-opening Shakespeare remix Midsummer, uses a bare stage for her Orlando. The framing scenic design is a curving wall-floor shape implemented by Joey Moro, who also designed the ambient projections that let you know when the characters are sailing on the ocean or standing in a snowy field. There are very few props. A bedsheet serves not just as a literal covering for many of the show’s many described sexual acts, but also as a handy shadow screen for some artistic silhouettes. The ensemble unfurls the sails of a ship at sea, frolics beneath the aforementioned bedsheet and, with just their bodies, whimsical expressions, and silent-movie aplomb, instantly summon up a lively, well-populated early 20th century street scene.

But the more touching, intimate exchanges are lost in the hustle, and those pasted-on chorus-line grins can be a real detriment to such a potentially layered and multi-expressive drama.

The same performers showed a much broader palette of emotions and interpretative styles this summer in Midsummer and in the ensemble-devised Ada Isaacs Menken biodrama love holds a lamp in this little room. The Orlando choices seem superficial by comparison, and turn a story that resists numerous clichés into one that is shaped by them.

Orlando runs now through Aug. 15 at the Yale Summer Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. (203) 432‑1566.

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