Emma Corrin is perfect in this frisky ode to freedom: GEORGINA BROWN's ... trends now
ORLANDO (GARRICK, LONDON)
VERDICT: Girls and boys come out to play
Rating: ****
Ever since Emma Corrin catapulted to stardom, after peeping shyly through their fringe as a teenage Princess Diana in The Crown and switching pronouns from she to they, the androgynous beauty has been the pin-up for non-binary identity.
Who better, then, to play the title role in Neil Bartlett’s funny but moving adaptation of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending, time-travelling flight of fancy?
It’s a frisky romp through the centuries, with Orlando – first as a man, then as a woman – exploring sex, sexuality, sexism as well as ecstasy: where to find it, and with whom.
Orlando, penned in 1928 and inspired by Woolf’s passionate affair with the aristocrat Vita Sackville-West when they were part of the boho Bloomsbury set but also married women, was a ground-breaking bid for self-determination.
It’s a frisky romp through the centuries, with Orlando – first as a man, then as a woman – exploring sex, sexuality, sexism as well as ecstasy
And it remains so, wittily engaging with today’s often shrill debate about gender fluidity, rigid classifications and conventional expectations.
Bartlett’s approach is playful rather than pious, merrily dropping in lines from Shakespeare (an expert on the business of male actors playing female characters and
