Show name: The Yellow Wallpaper
Venue: Lime Studio at Greenside @ George Street
Time: 4.05pm
Running until: 29th August (excluding 16th, 23rd and 30th)
Rating: 5/5 ★★★★★
Reviewer: Katie Borland
After completing sold-out runs in New York, this unique adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story has arrived at the Fringe for the first time. The Yellow Wallpaper combines contemporary dance, music and excerpts from the original text to create a beautiful and chilling performance.
The plot centres around Jane, a woman who suffers from a postpartum nervous disorder and has subsequently been put on the rest cure by her physician husband and confined to a room with yellow wallpaper. Soon, she becomes obsessed with the patterns in the wallpaper and becomes convinced there is a “creeping” woman trapped within.
Gilman’s original text is an important nineteenth-century feminist work that was inspired by her own experience of the rest cure, a treatment of enforced bed rest and isolation that was prescribed as a cure-all for nervous disorders. Through utilisation of the gothic genre, the text critiqued the patriarchal, male-monopolised field of medicine and its control over female bodily autonomy.
Seated in the small theatre of Lime Studio, facing the compact stage, the audience can’t help but feel trapped in the room of yellow wallpaper with Jane. The modest set, comprising just a bed and chair, only adds to the feeling of imprisonment and isolation from the start.
Not a single breath of the one-hour running time is wasted. Caitlin Ort has directed and choreographed each scene with precision and makes use of every inch of the stage. All elements of the production flow seamlessly throughout and contribute effectively to the terror that comes alive on stage.
Each member of the six-person ensemble is phenomenal. Leading the production is Broadway performer Meghan Ort, who brings a powerful stage presence and perfectly portrays Jane’s mental anguish. It is hard to tear your gaze from her for a second. I particularly enjoyed the performances of the trio of dancers who were, at times, able to invoke tension with just a glance or arm movement.
The combination of evocative dance, music, lighting and Jane’s frantic narration conjures the terrifying yellow wallpaper that is driving Jane’s descent into psychosis. The abstract nature of the wallpaper is powerful and haunting and captivates the audience completely, drawing them into Jane’s frightening perception of reality.
The only thing that missed the mark for me was the comedic dance number around halfway through the running time. I felt this disrupted the paranoia that had been building and felt out of place. However, this disruption only lasted a moment, and I did enjoy the other comedic moments in the play, as they complemented the rest of the piece well.
The Ort sisters’ The Yellow Wallpaper is an absurd and mesmerising adaptation of a seminal feminist text that had me completely absorbed in the room of yellow wallpaper with Jane. The performance invites conversation about the text’s original message as medical misogyny persists and women’s bodily autonomy remains contested today.
I would highly recommend this show to fans of the original text or anyone who likes the sound of a visceral, genre-bending experience infused with horror and female rage.
