Orlando

This rendition of Woolf’s fictional biography of Elizabethan nobleman Orlando is graced with the voice of award-winning narrator Juliet Stevenson, who just may be the voice of classic literature. Stevenson’s crisp, droll delivery of satirical fiction hits all the right notes. Orlando begins as a rather shallow young man whose troubles in love eventually send him into a coma of depression. When he awakens, he finds that he has been transformed into a woman who ages slowly over the next centuries. During this time, Orlando explores the joys and frustrations of her new sex, concerned with learning who rather than why she is. While the hapless protagonist finds himself, then herself propelled from one drama to the next, Woolf takes opportunities for biting commentary on British culture, literature, and changing attitudes toward gender. While some aspects of the novel are unfortunate products of its time, Stevenson and Woolf will more often have listeners chuckling aloud or shaking their heads knowingly. Woolf’s critiques of attitudes toward gender essentialism, in particular, seem quite relevant, even today.