THEATRE
The Yellow Wallpaper by Amanda Armstrong
At La Mama till June 19, 1994
Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 8 June 1994
This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 8 June 1994
Temporary nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency" describes the condition suffered by the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper. There is more hysteria in this production than depression.
The play is adapted by actor, Amanda Armstrong and director, Fille Dusseljee from a story by early feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It attempts to abstract and physicalise the mental state of the woman.
Armstrong is alone in the La Mama space just as the woman is in her wallpapered room. She obsesses about her wallpaper design which is peopled with "creeping women" trying to escape. The symbolism is obvious: the woman is incarcerated in her own mind, in her own room by her husband, in her illness.
The story has great potential for exploring mental illness, compulsive behaviour and disorientation, but the performance remains unintentionally unsympathetic. Dusseljee has created a very physical style with some interesting moments but it is disconnected from the text and often feels uncomfortable and arbitrary.
Sound features strongly. There is a haunting and evocative soundscape by Guy Hancock and Armstrong's singing voice is moving and resonant in a way which is lacking in the dialogue.
The play, however, has a rather contrived and jarring dynamic. It seems to use either accelerator or brake, mute button or full volume. The final ten minutes seemed to find a balance, to surprise and disturb whereas the rest was too obvious. The symbolism is overstated where mental illness is much more subtle.
Madness is timeless. People suffer now as they always have. Perhaps we now have too sophisticated an understanding of it from pop psychology to tolerate a simplistic interpretation.
KATE HERBERT
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