Montclair's Peak Performances: Scottish troupe adapts Woolf's "Orlando"

Judith Williams as Orlando
(photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan)

Scottish experimental theater troupe Cryptic, founded and directed by Cathie Boyd, will make its U.S. debut with Darryl Pinckney's music theater adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, April 10-13, for Montclair State University's Peak Performances series.

Described as “the longest and most charming love letter in literature,” Woolf dedicated Orlando to her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, whose fictionalized family history, as well as Sackville-West’s own flexible approach to sexuality and marriage provide the subject matter.

In Cryptic’s magical production, the show’s compression of 400 years of packed events, Orlando’s transformation from man to woman, his multiple costume changes without leaving stage, is courtesy of Living Canvas, an interactive real-time tracking and projection technology. The Cryptic version of the play marks the first time the alchemy of Living Canvas has been applied to theater. Orlando’s escape to Constantinople is made vividly real through the use of Point Cloud Data Imaging that generates 3D depictions of buildings.

Original score composed by Craig Armstrong and Antye Greie aka AGF

The Alexander Kasser Theater
Montclair State University
1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey
(Click here for Google Map.)

For complete schedule, ticket and transportation information (including shuttle buses from Manhattan), click here.