Neither a woman nor a man: STC’s Orlando

Often cited as the world’s longest love-letter, Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando is a fictional biography of Orlando, an Elizabethan youth who wins the favour of Queen Elizabeth I, and through good fortune and a dash of incredulity, lives across centuries, barely ageing a day in the process; following a sex-change in Constantinople, she (“for there can be no doubt about her sex”) returns to England a woman, only to find the deck of cards is stacked against her time and again, until Woolf’s novel finishes in “the present age” (i.e. 1928), when Orlando is well over three-hundred years old (yet looks little more than thirty six). Adapted for the stage by Sarah Ruhl, Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Orlando is directed by Sarah Goodes, and although full of colour and energy, it is perhaps hampered somewhat by a text which contains perhaps too much of Woolf’s own text and not enough of the playwright’s own dramaturgical landscaping to make it a truly effective piece of theatre.

Goodbye, yellow brick road: Belvoir’s The Wizard of Oz

The story of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has found a place as one of the most famous and enduring stories in (children’s) literature; just as the celebrated MGM film with Judy Garland has become a staple of millions of people’s lives since 1939, the story has become synonymous with a journey of discovery and a quest for self-identity and -worth. At its heart are four displaced people who are in some way incomplete; the book (and film), then, becomes a chronicle of their quest for completeness, for self-change. It is also a space for dreaming and yearning, a place for the glorious flights of fancy of your imagination, a space for a certain amount of theatricality, illusion, and artifice. Based on the myth created by Baum’s book and perpetuated in all its Technicolor glory, Belvoir’s latest offering is Adena Jacobs’ reimagining of The Wizard of Oz. However: if you do happen to go down to Belvoir this May, it’s best to leave your expectations and love of the book and/or film at the door.

Round dance: Enigma’s La Ronde

Written around 1900 and not performed publicly until 1920, Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (or Der Reigen in the original German) is based around a simple theatrical conceit, whereby ten characters (five men, five women) come together in a series of sexually-charged scenes, with one person leaving the scene at the end and replaced by the next character, in the pattern AB, BC, CD… JA. Its title, literally translating to ‘the round’ recalls the musical pattern of a round where interlocking melodies are staggered over the top of each other at intervals. Presented here by independent company Enigma, La Ronde is a seductive and beguiling play which, under Steven Hopley’s direction, shines and crackles with a very real sexual frisson.

Hopley’s staging here amplifies Schnitzler’s structural conceit; by staging La Ronde ‘in the round’ on a raised circular dias (designed by Rachel Scane), Hopley creates an intimacy which could easily have been lost in a larger, more conventional theatre space. Sparsely furnished, Hopley’s cast furnish their scenes with a vitality and a believability which is perfectly suited to Schnitzler’s timeless text. Some references have been understandably updated, but the play remains largely intact and (surprisingly) relevant and applicable to a twenty-first century audience.