Review Roundup: ORLANDO at The Lyric Stage

The Lyric Stage of Boston presents Virginia Woolf's ORLANDO, which opened on February 23rd and will run through March 25th. A literary love letter to Woolf's lover and friend Vita Sackville-West, ORLANDO follows the titular character as they go to bed one night as a man, and wake up the next morning as a woman. This enables Orlando to see the world through new eyes.

The Cast of ORLANDO: Caroline Lawton (Orlando), Elise Arsenault (Chorus), Michael Hisamoto (Chorus), Rory Lambert-Wright (Chorus), Jeff Marcus (Chorus), and Haley Spivey (Chorus).

The Creative Team: A. Nora Long (Director), Richard Wadsworth Chambers (Scenic Design), Jessica Pribble (Costume Design), and Steven McIntosh (Lighting Design).

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Kilian Melloy, Edge Media Network: Living for half a millennium -- in a way, crossing vast expanses of time the way sailors cross the oceans -- gives Orlando the years, the raw material, and the emotional texturing she needs to compose, at last, her great poem. This sense of completion, and a corresponding sense of renewal, proceeds from an overall feeling of mystery. You could call it fate, or, as Ruhl does, "the spirit of the age" -- or, as Potter did in her film, you could symbolize it in the sight of a hovering angel. What we get here is the appearance of an iPhone (and a cello rendition of a universally recognizable ringtone), and what we understand is something about the Zeitgeist -- any given Zeitgeist, really: The present is endlessly confusing, and the past subject to endless interpretation, but it's the future where potential persist. This production keeps the running time down to a tight 90 minutes, propelled by an energetic cadre of actors including Elise Arsenault, Michael Hisamoto, Rory Lambert-Wright, Jeff Marcus, and Hayley Spivey. Arsenault, on cello, also accompanies the play with live music.

Jeremy D. Goodwin, The Boston Globe: A. Nora Long directs this delightfully propulsive and clear-headed production, wittily steering an outstanding six-person cast through the sort of precise physical choreography that disguises itself as effortless... Caroline Lawton is indefatigably charming as Orlando, whether as a naive young man bewildered by the physical affections of Queen Elizabeth I (Hayley Spivey, terrific) or a newly minted maiden chafing at the behavioral restrictions that accompany a mid-show change of costume and gender. Each actor in the chorus - also including Michael Hisamoto, Rory Lambert-Wright, Jeff Marcus, and Elise Arsenault - is similarly excellent and indispensable to the rapid-fire storytelling and scene-shifting.

Carolyn Clay, The ARTery: At the Lyric, "Orlando" unfolds amid a simple wooden frame by set designer Richard Wadsworth Chambers, an oddly trussed-up chandelier among its few adornments. On a high platform to one side, cellist (and musical director) Elise Arsenault provides affecting accompaniment when not climbing down to join the ensemble. But ah, there's the rub: the five-person troupe backing Lawton's amiable, questioning Orlando, their morphing identities signified by bits and pieces of period costume, is given to comic exaggeration. The women, as played by men, are mostly mincing, the Russian princess a sort of butch outtake from "Doctor Zhivago." (At least Queen Elizabeth, in the prim person of Hayley Spivey, isn't a raging drag queen). And given the broad characterizations, not to mention an insufficient command of the now rhapsodic, now droll language, Ruhl's characteristically arresting mix of lyricism and whimsy fizzles.

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