Orlando claims an oak tree trunk is ‘anything to which I could attach my floating heart’, such is the power of his imagination. Cryptic’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel demands its audience utilize this sort of imagination too. The narrative is replete with depictions of events through the ages. Orlando, who refuses to age, meets with Queen Elizabeth; dances with her courtiers; encounters the Great Frost; crosses the seas; sees the foundation of the British Empire. All this is simply narrated by Orlando, always alone on stage. As if we were reading the novel, we must witness the story’s events in our mind’s eye.But this is theatre, and Cryptic’s brand indeed ‘ravishes the senses’, as the show’s programme claims. Our imaginings are aided by a stunning lighting plot and a series of projections which fall onto long, parchment-like gauze strips. Soundscape also populates an otherwise bare stage, indicating setting or the voices of Orlando’s companions. However, both the projections and the soundscapes are more abstract than mimetic of a ‘reality’, and sequences can become monotonous. There is a strange sense that the viewer is being bombarded with visual and aural material, and yet being given little to really engage with. As the singular Orlando, Judith Williams is impressive. She is clear, clipped and sprightly as the young favourite of Queen Liz and appropriately sensual after that famous transformation from the ‘probity of breeches to the seductiveness of petticoats’ - which is represented inventively. And yet, despite the conviction Williams demonstrates, the grandeur of what Orlando depicts is sometimes lost in Williams’ singleness. Whilst Williams’ rich, amplified voice booms across the beautifully lit stage, it is still empty. This production draws something of a blank; unfortunately not the kind of blank as in Woolf’s statement of experimentation, ‘I leave a great blank here’. Rather, the show seems a little hollow.
