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The actor expertly navigates the detours of Virginia Woolf’s adventure – a feminist fantasy that speaks to our timesSpanning 350 years, Orlando is an adventure through time that tells of a seemingly immortal nobleman and would-be writer in the 16th century who catches the eye of Elizabeth I. After he arrives at court, he becomes her lover and she bestows on him land and property though is irked when she sees him kissing a younger woman. In the 17th century, during the reign of Charles II, he is made a duke and appointed ambassador to Constantinople; there, he sleeps for seven days and wakes up a woman. Sailing back to England, Orlando finds her sex means she can no longer own her home, leading to legal battles that drag on for many years. She takes to wearing masculine clothing in a bid to reclaim her authority and battle with the forces of patriarchy.Nearly a century after it was written, Virginia Woolf’s pioneering, genre-bending novel – a feminist fantasy written as a biography – has come into its own in an age of increased understanding and visibility around gender nonconformity. The actor and audio veteran Juliet Stevenson is the voice of Orlando, her reading expertly navigating the book’s narrative detours and the scores of voices, capturing the singular rhythms of Woolf’s prose. As the decades pass, our hero-turned-heroine travels the world, has multiple affairs and refuses to be bound by the conventions of the ages in which she finds herself. By the 20th-century, she is able to make her name as a writer. Orlando stands as an exhilarating reminder that gender fluidity isn’t a modern invention and how, over time, a single person can live multiple lives. Continue reading...