A woman’s mania, exacerbated by her claustrophobic room’s yellow wallpaper, is starkly explored in this riveting dance adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella.
Choreographed and directed by Caitlin Ort, The Yellow Wallpaper is a tightly formed dance piece delivered by six accomplished performers, chronicling the developing mania of protagonist Jane (Megan Ort), confined to a yellow wallpapered room as part of medical ‘treatment’ for what would now be known as postnatal depression, administered by her husband and sister-in-law. Although it is helpful to know a little bit about Gilman’s novella before seeing this production, under Caitlin Ort’s direction and choreography, the plot soon becomes starkly evident.
This is a sharp and accomplished blending of physical and verbal storytelling. As Jane, Megan Ort is frantic and devastating, with the character’s gradual decline a mesmerising watch. Ort is supported here by an ensemble trio who excel greatly at physically capturing the spiralling mania of the protagonist. Caitlin Ort’s choreography is fiercely alarming in this sense, with the performers bending into distorted shapes, combined with an urgent breath work that creates a stifling atmosphere, drawing us into Jane’s claustrophobic room.
Jane’s obsession with the yellow wallpapered walls, and the idea that there is power within the paper, and a woman hiding behind it, underpin her manic behaviour, and this too is represented remarkably slickly in Caitlin Ort’s choreography. The decision to use a stretching material for the ensemble to push and pull against, carving out disturbing and distorted shapes, is powerful, in one of the production’s more impactful standout moments.
Jane’s husband, John, is portrayed with a mercurially sinister undertone by Morgan Blanchard, alongside an increasingly unsettling Jennie (Paloma D’Auria). There is a sense that there is something dark going on between the pair, and the wallpaper, which fuels Jane’s chaotic perception of the room, but the play succeeds in not drawing too much attention to these characters, rightly maintaining a focus on Jane instead.
Largely, The Yellow Wallpaper succeeds. That said, the inclusion of a more jovial ‘4th July’ celebration dance routine feels a little misjudged and too extended. While it does help to project Jane’s increasing isolation, it also reduces too much of the production’s well-developed tension by this point, which, for a piece only lasting an hour, is difficult to get back to.
Nevertheless, this is an accomplished and impressively formed combination of theatre and dance. The choreography is angular, violent and even at times horrifying, and this all captures Jane’s terror, pain and psychological collapse effectively, and is an inventive reimagining of Gilman’s story.
