Review: ORLANDO, VAULT Festival

In 1928 Virginia Woolf explored freedom of identity with her novel Orlando. Coming out of a fierce but heartbreaking affair with Vita Sackville-West, Woolf imagined a young Elizabethan boy who lives for centuries, delving into themes of sexuality and gender.

Lucy Roslyn takes Orlando's experience and compares it to her character's own in a captivating piece of smooth storytelling. She starts her Orlando turning into the cool literature lecturer we all deserve, briefly explaining the original material and giving inklings about how the novel applies to her.

She brings into question how the "correct type of love" is in opposition to "something else" and how Orlando found himself in that same situation. Then, she takes the crowd on her own journey accompanied by Woolf's character: they visit Knole and examine her own sexuality, the reductive nature of labels, and the ultimate form of betrayal.

Roslyn's script is colloquial and colourful, and she's entertaining and touching as she revisits old memories as a mechanism to overcome grief. Directed by Josh Roche, she paces the traverse stage, alternating the excited sharing of Woolf's story to more earnest fragments from her own life.

Her Orlando is a deeply moving tale that tackles love and gender politics and mixes them with a passion for literature and the classics, confirming Roslyn a gorgeous storyteller.

Orlando runs at VAULT Festival until 24 February.