'The tale remains the same: the immortal Orlando is a young man, a hedonist and rake, a poet and lover, who awakens one day transformed into a young woman. Inspired by Chopin, astrophysics and the Great Frost of 1709, The Rabble have stripped Woolf 's Orlando down to a stark cosmological painting. Pre-Raphaelite punk.
This Orlando drifts through space instead of time, through galaxies instead of centuries, to explore the dark passages of gender, sexuality and fragmented identity. She is opposed by Queen Elizabeth, a shadowy figure who is every lover, husband and wife Orlando has ever had: manly, virginal, mysterious and powerful. Source: www.malthousetheatre.com.au/(Sighted 17/10/12).
'Orlando is young, rich and handsome. A courtier in the time of Elizabeth, he sets out in search of love, life, and a fabulous destiny – but he has to travel through 400 years to find it. He dashes through time, from wars and revolutions, to the decadence of the Restoration and the rise of industrial capitalism under Queen Victoria, to modernity – and as the world changes, so does Orlando. Who are they – woman? man? or something which defies all the old orders?'
Source: Production blurb.
