The putrid wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story evokes pus and piss but this adaptation uses barely a shade of yellow. On a stage dominated by a huge screen and cluttered with ropes and a dirty mattress, Stephanie Mohr’s production draws an immediate parallel between the confined woman with “a slight hysterical tendency” and the mysterious female figure she discerns in the pattern on the walls of her room. Aurélia Thierrée narrates while dancer Fukiko Takase, performing in this theatre’s studio, appears via video feed on the screen.
It is a clever concept, with Thierrée and Takase almost alternating the two roles. Takase’s choreography suggests the room’s past as a nursery and gymnasium (at one point she bounces playfully on the bed), as well as the woman’s notion that she is living in a haunted house. In one scene she eerily steps behind Thierrée; in another they almost clutch each other.
