Jermyn Street Theatre Announces Initial Cast For ORLANDO

It was announced today that Taylor McClaine has been cast as the eponymous Orlando in acclaimed playwright, Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's time and gender shifting masterpiece to be staged at Jermyn Street Theatre this spring.

Growing up as an Elizabethan pageboy and skating on the frozen Thames, Orlando never imagines he'll travel to Turkey. Or get married in the reign of Queen Victoria. Or live long enough to answer the telephone. He definitely isn't expecting to wake up as a woman one day. But if you stick around for five centuries, life is bound to get interesting...

Virginia Woolf's 1920s classic was written in tribute to her lover, Vita Sackville West and is adapted by two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and Tony Award nominee Sarah Ruhl.

Jermyn Street Theatre's new production of this dazzling stage adaptation is directed by the theatre's former Deputy Director Stella Powell-Jones. The Associate Director and Movement Director is Elliot Pritchard, set design is by Ceci Calf, costume design is by Emily Stuart, lighting design by Ali Hunter and the Composer and Sound Designer is Roly Botha.

Taylor McClaine recently graduated from The Lír Academy, Dublin, and this is their first professional role. Other casting will be announced soon.

Tom Littler - Jermyn Street Theatre Artistic Director says - "Two years later than planned, it's wonderful that we're about to go into rehearsal for Sarah Ruhl's brilliant rendering of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. After an exhaustive search for our Orlando, we're all thrilled to welcome Taylor McClaine to London. This is their theatre debut, but you will hear much more of them in the years ahead."

Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Orlando was first produced at Classic Stage Company in New York City in September 2010. It was subsequently staged by The Royal Exchange Manchester in 2014. The Jermyn Street Theatre production is its London premiere.

Jermyn Street Theatre is the West End's smallest producing theatre. The Stage's Fringe Theatre of the Year 2021 is led by Artistic and Executive Directors Tom Littler and Penny Horner. The programme includes outstanding new plays, rare revivals, new versions of European classics, and high-quality musicals, alongside one-off musical and literary events. It collaborates with theatres across the world, and its productions have transferred to the West End and Broadway. During the theatre's temporary closure due to the COVID 19 lockdowns the theatre presented the award-winning Brave New World season of digital work, which included the complete cycle of Shakespeare's sonnets performed by a mixture of graduating drama students and household names including Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Colman and the acclaimed 15 Heroines with DigitalTheatre+ featuring adaptations of Ovid from writers including Juliet Gilkes Romero and Timberlake Wertenbaker. The theatre reopened last autumn with the critically acclaimed Encounters Season which featured some of our most celebrated acting talent, including, Dame Siân Phillips in a Samuel Beckett double bill, Michael Pennington in The Tempest and Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer in Ben Brown's A Splinter of Ice. As well Orlando, The Outsiders Season has featured Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story, Rain and Zoe Save the World and The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein and includes the forthcoming world premiere of Howard Brenton's Cancelling Socrates (2 June to 2 July).

Preview Tickets £15

The Quarter Tickets £29 (£25 concession) booked between 17 March - 27 April

Beginners £32, £28 (Concessions) if booked after 28 April

Concessions available to 65+, theatre unions, Access needs, or Universal Credit

BOX OFFICE: 020 7287 2875
and online at www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

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