Adaptor and Director – Shea Donovan
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her classic short story in 1892 to illustrate the callous treatment of women with mental illnesses. Shea Donovan has brought her stark adaptation of the story to the Bull pub in Wanstead, as part of the Wanstead Fringe festival.
The production is absolutely stripped back: two screens, two chairs, and a couple of LED lights. In front of this, Kenzie Wynne brings the story to vivid, horrid life. It is a remarkably potent example of the power of theatre coming from truthful performance. Everything else is fluff.
In period costume, in front of a frieze of yellow wallpaper, she becomes progressively more dishevelled, strips off the wallpaper to reveal writhing images underneath, and confides in the audience, telling us of the brutal certainty with which her doctor-husband treats her depression. She has to rest, just rest. In a room with barred windows and a well-locked door, all contact with her daughter reduced to glimpses out of the window, she mustn’t work or write or read. Just rest. Rarely has concern more closely resembled a prison sentence. And gradually, the wallpaper she loathes discloses secrets.
The performance of Kenzie Wynne is powerful and heart-breaking and the adaptation is economical and resonant; the company does its job, bringing home the emotional power of the story, and does it with minimal resources. There is nothing much to look at besides the solo actor, and that is quite enough. Wynne holds us rapt for the hour-long performance, and the lack of set or mood lighting is never a problem. The piece uses recorded voices that are muddy and unclear, but that too is appropriate – garbled histories of contemporary postpartum trauma swim on the very edge of perception, like the voices from behind the wallpaper. A truly effective, quite remarkable piece of theatre.
Runs until 24 September 2026
Reviewer: Chris Lilly
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