There’s a slight pause and a knowingly raised eyebrow — enough to provoke laughter from the audience — when the title character of “Orlando” begins to introduce himself with this line: “He — for there could be no doubt of his sex.”
But the play is set in a universe in which there is, in fact, doubt. And this Orlando is played by the protean writer and performer Taylor Mac, who delivers the line while cutting a resplendent androgynous figure in shiny red boots and white, vaguely Elizabethan garb.
Sarah Ruhl’s play, in a revival that opened on Sunday at Signature Theater, is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s fantasy of the same title. Published in 1928, the book has traversed the decades as seemingly unscathed by time as its protagonist. When it starts, Orlando is a 16-year-old boy during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. About halfway through, he abruptly wakes up as a woman, and continues on, barely aging, until the story ends in the Roaring Twenties. Orlando might still be at it somewhere, for all we know.
In an era of questioning and rethinking gender norms, you can see why this tale would particularly resonate — and indeed we just can’t seem to quit it. In the past few years alone, the philosopher Paul B. Preciado explored his path as a trans man through the mirror of Woolf’s novel in his film “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Emma Corrin starred in Neil Bartlett’s 2022 stage adaptation, and in 2019 the director Katie Mitchell and the playwright Alice Birch offered their own take.
Ruhl’s version premiered Off Broadway in 2010, and casting Mac, a shape-shifter of the highest order, in this revival’s main role is certainly a coup. Will Davis’s production, however, seems to think that’s enough.
The show gets off to a clunky start, repeatedly breaking the fourth wall and using that device as a crutch. This may be an attempt to echo Woolf’s own distancing technique (she styled the novel as a biography), but it just comes across as broad, as if Davis didn’t trust that the text’s humor would still charm us. Mac is also a little tentative at first, which is odd for a performer known for boundary-crossing fearlessness. (Mac’s most recent creation, the musical epic “Bark of Millions,” paid tribute to queer figures.)
After an early meeting with an appropriately arch Queen Elizabeth (Nathan Lee Graham), Orlando’s next significant encounter is with the Russian princess Sasha (Janice Amaya, whose accent reminded me of the Soviet heel Zoya the Destroya in the wrestling series “GLOW”), with whom he falls madly in love. Sparks should be flying, but anything remotely sensual is missing from this production.
Things begin to stir with the arrival of Lisa Kron as a fetching representative of the Romanian nobility. She and Mac were in a superlative production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Good Person of Szechwan” in 2013, and they appear to relish this time back together. Watching them revel in slapstick, you realize how rare it is to see such amusingly shameless hamming. But those scenes, enjoyable as they are, stick out from the rest of the show, which feels as if it is trying to make incompatible pieces fit and struggles to suggest any coherent idea about the text.
Oana Botez’s costumes don’t help much: The looks for Orlando and Queen Elizabeth are fairly period-specific, and inventive; with her golden winglike appendages, Her Majesty appears as if she could take flight at any moment. But the five other cast members make do mostly with assorted track jackets and pants — was there no budget left for them?
The biggest surprise in the production is how much it improves after the intermission, as Mac settles into the role. The comedy is still expertly done. An inspired bit involves the difficulty of crossing and uncrossing one’s legs in sticky, squeaky vinyl boots; another has Orlando, now a woman, trying out different readings of the words “Yes, please.” But it’s the character’s melancholy that finally emerges when confronted with the weight of a long life — one that has swung from the freedoms enjoyed by men to the restrictions imposed on women. Writing and poetry could mean salvation for Orlando. It might not be enough for this show.
Orlando
Through May 12 at the Signature Theater, Manhattan; signaturetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.