Room – A Room of One’s Own – Pleasance Courtyard

Room- A Room of One’s Own, written and performed by Heather Alexander, is a refined, intimate, and literary pleasure. A room for the soul, where one can meditate, reflect on contemporary reality, be enchanted by the beauty of prosody, and let oneself go with hope, not only in the future but also in an illustrious past that still lives within us.

Everything, from the scenography to Dominique Gerrard’s direction, is impeccable. With just a few props, Alexander moves around the stage in a monologue, almost a stream-of-consciousness, transporting the spectator to a very precise era, a very precise environment, and a very precise mind. We are in the early 1900s in the room, or instead at the desk, of Virginia Woolf, the author of One Room of One’s Own, and the words, the reflections, and the emotions of this one-woman show are taken from her essays, taken up, summarised and re-elaborated by a writing that proves to be wise and concise, cultured and modern. Through Woolf’s text, through the words of a literary genius from a century ago, Alexander speaks to the contemporary woman with a dramatic force that moves the audience towards the end with a truthful and immediate message. And it is a pleasure to see her on stage, moving in her androgynous cut clothes, with naturalness and elegance, the cigarette now extinguished, almost forgotten between her ringed fingers and the shawl casually thrown over her shoulders. So is seeing her at the small table, the sweaty papers strewn around her, the fruit of intellectual fatigue, and the books she occasionally picks up, scrutinizes with curiosity, and comments on.

The strength of the play lies not only in the caustic irony with which Alexander comments on a patriarchal and sexist society, which unfortunately still resembles the contemporary one in many respects, but also in the skilful delineation of the atavistic condemnation not only of women, but of women of genius, incredibly gifted but unjustly relegated to the roles of slaves, mothers, concubines, and condemned to poverty, loneliness and finally death by a society that has never given them a chance. A play that hits the mark not only for the prose of a clear and sharp text, without smearing, but for an investigation that is as bitter as it is merciless. Perennially excluded from the centres of culture, knowledge, and information, Alexander’s Virginia observes from the outside, on the banks of a river, or in the intimacy of her room, a world of almost grotesque incongruities, ruthless boundaries, and rules, of incorrigible prejudices. Yet, she does not allow herself to despair, but with the acumen of her wit, she speaks to the women who have been and are in a dialogue that transcends time and space.

The play explores how women over the centuries have managed, despite the most adverse socio-economic and cultural conditions, to become from an object of literary pleasure, from mere scenic characters with strong dramatic potential, to thinking, writing, creating subjects, changing the rules of a game that has always been governed by men and for men alone. A hymn to the power of resilience, the almost witch-like talent of female genius, and the strength of courage that has spanned the centuries. A play that hits the nail on the head cuts through an atavistic problem that we still drag on and speaks to the courage of women who are and who will be. Room fits splendidly into the contemporary feminist debate, dusting off a text already widely adapted, with freshness and skill, making an example of what a woman writer, gifted with the freedom of mind, can do.

Playing until 27th August, further information and tickets can be found HERE.

Reviewer: Anna Chiari

Reviewed: 18th August 2022

North West End UK Rating: ★★★★