Orlando

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

5 stars

In despair when an acute attack of writer’s block hit her, Virginia Woolf dipped her pen in ink and began to write as if on autopilot.

The result of her frenzied outpouring was the fantastic spoof biography Orlando.

First published in 1928, and thought to be a love letter to her great friend Vita Sackville-West, it’s a book of many themes but above all it is an excellent satire on sexism.

The story is simple enough — a 16-year-old boy becomes the muse of Elizabeth I and becomes a duke. At the age of 30 he is sent to Constantinople as the British ambassador.

The city is invaded and Orlando sleeps but, when he finally wakes up, the world has changed and so has he. Orlando is now a woman. Over the next 300 years (s)he travels the world searching for love and the meaning of life.

It is a huge gamble putting such a complex and literary book on the stage but this production, brilliantly directed by Max Webster, is a real tour de force. Sarah Ruhl’s pared-down adaptation and designer Ti Green’s simple set capture the dream-like fantasy that evolves on stage.

Suranne Jones is truly captivating as the androgynous Orlando, weaving a spell over the audience as she effortlessly moves from naive boy to stridently mature woman. Richard Hope, Thomas Arnold and Tunji Kasim provide excellent support as a Greek-style chorus, narrating proceedings and playing a multitude of characters from duchesses to maids. Their winning and highly comic delivery is in the tradition of the best pantomime.

The dream world is completed by Webster cleverly integrating the hauntingly beautiful music of the exceptional cellist Hetti Price.

In many ways Orlando, a work of literary genius, is a long and elegiac prose poem and this production does it proud. Wherever Virginia Woolf’s spirit is, I am confident that she will look down on the Royal Exchange and say: “Brilliant, you get it.”

Runs until March 22. Box office (0161) 833-9833.