Orlando Off-Broadway Reviews

Ruhl’s adaptation of Orlando pulls heavily from the source material, which can end up feeling like a distant narration rather than an emotionally involved story. That said, the cast are all endlessly personable. Laughs abound throughout the duration of the show’s 100-minute runtime

The episodic adventures should be delightful, but they are instead removed and remote, for a compound of reasons. Ruhl’s script relies on narration rather than dialogue (of which there is admittedly relatively little in Woolf’s novel.) Six of the cast members (all but Mac) spend most of their time not as characters but as chorus members. They divvy up their exposition, often one single line after another. And they are often huddled together on a stage that is essentially bare – which results in a vastness that swallows up their lines.

Occasionally, Davis's staging, which includes periodic dance breaks (and with assistance from Brendan Aanes's sound design, captures the thrum of a discotheque), overdoes the satirical elements as if to emphasize the relevance of the situations and themes. Yet the cast (which is rounded out by the impressively mutable Jo Lampert and TL Thompson) are adept at reining in their performances as moments veer toward camp excesses.