A Room of One’s Own, July 18, 2019 ***1/2

THEATRE
Adapted by Peta Hanrahan from Virginia Woolf, by Sentient Theatre
At fortyfivedownstairs, until July 28, 2019 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert (on Thurs 18 July 2019) 
Stars: ***1/2

This review also published in Herald Sun Arts on Tues 23 July 2019. KH

A Room Of One's Own - Marissa O'Reilly_Pic by Tommy Holt

If you had a secure income and a room of your own in which to write uninterrupted, could you be a fiction writer?

Perhaps not, but according to Virginia Woolf in her 1928 essay, A Room of One’s Own, money and a private space might allow a woman to have a jolly good crack at it.

Peta Hanrahan adapts Woolf’s inspired analysis into gentle, perambulatory musings on the conditions confronted by women who wanted to be writers, from the Elizabethan period up until Woolf’s own time in early 20^th century England.

With audience on two sides of a space empty but for a scruffy sofa and a table, four actors (Anthea Davis, Marissa O’Reilly, Anna Kennedy, Jackson Trickett) deliver Woolf’s intelligent, incisive and challenging opinions on the obstacles faced by women writers.

Although this hour-long performance is essentially a lecture, the cast is relaxed and engaging as they stroll about, opining on matters including famous men’s contradictory views on women, Shakespeare’s fictional sister’s doomed writing career, women having no access to personal funds, and the rigid rules forbidding them from studying at universities such as Cambridge.

Although all the words are Woolf’s, each actor imbues the dialogue with an individual, identifiable tone and character. Davis is edgy and teacherly as she questions the matters raised, while O'Reilly attacks the issues with girlish enthusiasm, sensitivity and emotion.

Conversely, Kennedy’s attitude is restrained, sceptical maturity, while the fourth actor, Trickett, provides a subtle counterpoint as the sole, male voice.

Women writers finally came into their own in the 18^th century with the rise of the novel, a new form that women such as the Brontes and George Elliot embraced with relish.

There is warmth, humour and cheerful cynicism in Woolf’s analysis of women in fiction writing, and the concerns she raises about gender inequities are still, sadly, relevant today.

by Kate Herbert