Court Theatre’s ‘Orlando’ brings proper mix of satire and passion

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Transformation is the key to theater, with actors priding themselves on their ability to morph into beings radically different from themselves, or at least lurking in some corner of their psyches. And through the centuries, playwrights have happily supplied actors with extreme transformational challenges. Just look at Tiresias, the blind prophet who appears in several ancient Greek tragedies, (though fully male, he was “punished” by being turned into a female for seven years), or the countless characters in such modern plays as “M. Butterfly,” “Irma Vep” and “I Am My Own Wife” — all of which go far beyond simple acts of drag.

In “Orlando,” Sarah Ruhl’s alternately blithely passionate and playfully satirical adaptation of the gender-flipping 1928 Virginia Woolf novel (a quasi-autobiographical take on her lover, Vita Sackville-West), such transformation is of the essence. It also is what drives every element of director Jessica Thebus’ fleet, fluid, luminous, exquisitely imagined, impeccably realized production for Court Theatre in which the radiantly handsome/beautiful Amy J. Carle gives a fiercely intelligent, physically bold, altogether stellar performance in the marathon title role.

“Orlando” moves through 500 years of history. It begins with the character’s youthful incarnation as an adolescent boy, when the young warrior-poet captures the fancy of the aged Queen Elizabeth (Lawrence Grimm is priceless here, and strangely touching, too), before coming of age thanks to the impossibly seductive, frostily enigmatic Russian princess (Erica Elam is absolutely incandescent). (Grimm is one of the four ever-transforming men in the show’s drag chorus, which includes Thomas J. Cox, Adrian Danzig and a pixiesh Kevin Douglas, all of whom morph from suitors, to sailors to oak trees.)

From here it’s on to the 17th century and Orlando’s pursuit by a loony Romanian duchess (Cox). And then, presto-chango, “he” becomes a “she” who is dropped into the Victorian age, and a dress, at a time when a marriage band and a husband (winningly played by Adrian Danzig), becomes the obsessive pursuit of every woman. Modern times (the 20th century), brings other social challenges and realizations about the very nature of being human, let alone male or female.

The Court production moves like the wind, with Collette Pollard’s set of draped beds on wheels, chandeliers, dressing tables and lime green curtains seamlessly melding time and place. It is all masterfully lit by Jaymi Lee Smith, and grandly embellished by Linda Roethke’s splendid black-and-white costumes. Enchantment (and fine confusion) from start to finish.