A company that Grows with every performance
Posted on 11th October 2025
Adapting a nineteenth-century novella about wallpaper for the stage might seem an odd choice of source material, but that would be to reckon without the considerable talent of the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is the tale of a woman slowly going mad in the attic. So far, so Charlotte Brontë. But unlike Jane Eyre, Gilman’s mad woman is centre stage, her descent into insanity chronicled in her own words. Crucially, and controversially at the time, the novella treats the subject with sensitivity, going so far as to imply that the imposition of inactivity contributed to, rather than cured, her condition.
There are vanishingly few examples of feminist literature dating from the turn of the nineteenth century – only Kate Chopin readily springs to my mind – so little wonder that until the 1970s Gilman’s novella was seen as gothic horror, albeit worthy of Edgar Allen Poe. Watched through the prism of Growing Theatre’s reimagining, however, the feminist perspective quickly became painfully clear, highlighting the patriarchal oppression meted out by a husband in the late eighteen hundreds. The pain and psychological damage of simply not being listened to was writ large on Christina Isgrove-Clarke’s face, reinforcing without overstating the implication of Gilman’s words. Imagine a cross between Keeley Hawes and Nicola Walker and you should get a sense of her outstanding performance skills, offering up a portrait of a woman constrained by both her husband’s seemingly benign diagnosis and her unyielding loyalty to him. In her soulless smiles that never reach her eyes there’s even a hint that gas lighting might be in play here – long before Patrick Hamilton coined the phrase.
The Yellow Wallpaper is short, even for a novella, so I’m guessing this stage version may have been unabridged. If so, it’s to the company’s credit that they recognised how well the text is suited to the stage, and how ingeniously they brought it to life. Earlier this year, the company highlighted the army’s iniquitous persecution of lesbians. They did so with bravery, invention and ambition, and I looked forward to whatever they came up with next. Suffice to say I wasn’t disappointed – if anything, expectations were surpassed.