“And then Orlando woke up. He stretched. He rose. He stood before us in total nudity, and we have no choice but to admit – he was a woman.”
It is the key scene in Virginia Woolf’s novel. As the English envoy in Constantinople, Orlando wakes up following a seven-day sleep.
Orlando stands there naked
And further: “Orlando stood there stark naked. No human being since the beginning of the world has looked more gorgeous. Orlando had become a woman, there is no denying it. But in every other respect Orlando remained exactly as he had been.”
On stage, the bedroom wall obscures the view of the transformation. You can only experience the magical moment on the big screen above. The delicate Jenny König with her red, flowing hair stands naked in front of the mirror in a historical film set and, wonderfully childishly boyish, lets her new breasts sway with delight.
In 1928, Woolf described what is now known as “gender fluidity” – an oscillation between gender and sexual orientation. Whether Orlando is male or female is completely irrelevant to her identity. Only society’s expectations change with gender change.
The novel is brimming with bold wit
Woolf didn’t want to be monopolized by the women’s movement, the novel is full of bold wit, irony and what would later be called magical realism. A light satire – also on the literary genre of biography and on the literary business, the saturation of which Woolf exhibits in a wonderfully poisonous way.
The narrator has to turn to the reader for advice regarding the confusion in Orlando’s life – and vice versa. For this, Cathlen Gawlich sits in a speaker booth at screen height and reads large parts of the novel. In this way, the sardonic, lively tone of the original can be heard – but the evening remains an illustrated story, which is only interrupted here and there by the direct speech of the actors.
Jenny König and Konrad Singer, as her bratty admirer, throw ironic, annoyed looks at the camera. As pointed and comedic as this evening is, so close to Woolf’s language – he trusts the means of the theater so little.
The view of the stage is often superfluous
Even more so than in Mitchell’s highly technical productions, there is no need to look at the stage for long stretches. Scenes are moved, cameras rolled, almost 90 costumes changed at the edge of the stage. An impressive, technically perfected process, in which the players become the film’s vicarious agents, not in contact with the audience but with the camera.
Many images are also pre-recorded: Orlando roaming through poppies, in the leaves under the oak tree, Orlando in front of historic mansions, later as a woman on the plane and in the car through today’s rainy London.
Perfectly lit images that illustrate the main character’s journey through time in detail and break it up ironically. A highly comical, almost caricature-like evening, which, despite all its mechanization, makes the acting itself, the living people on the stage, seem lifeless.
Actor, forced into a corset
The aesthetic concept initially seems to fit the content: reality meets projection, appearance meets reality. But soon the corset Mitchell forces her players into seems as rigid as that imposed on the sexes.
Despite all the perfection, there is still a sense of uneasiness, as here the media image pushes the body off the stage.
Further dates of “Orlando” at the Berlin Schaubühne:
7.9., 8.9., 11.9., 12.9., 13.9., 25.10., 26.10., 27.10. 2019
