ORCHIDEA (2019)

Man and woman meet. Man and woman fall in love. But there’s a snag. Man shares home with raven – and woman shares home with lion. Relationship begins in Victorian England and ends during the Blitz, yet neither lover ages throughout its duration, only succumbing to time’s pollutants when the bomb drops. No, this is not yer average love story, but passions are no less passionate for it. If anything, passions run higher because of it. A society wit and wordsmith falls under the spell of the mysterious, exotic and elegant Orchidea – a woman with a back-story even stranger and sadder than his own. Despite the plentiful baggage between them, fireworks illuminate the sealed bedchamber and promises are made in the heat of the moment that prove difficult to keep. Orchidea appears from nowhere and returns there when circumstances conspire to curtail a romance spanning a century. ‘Orchidea’ plays out in the draughty environs of a Jacobean mansion prowled by a tempestuous big cat and in a chic Georgian townhouse that is the roost for a corvid parasite. It beats with fiery intensity, celebrating the joyous union of the lonely while it lasts and depicting the disintegration of love with a howl that pierces the hardest of hearts.