GreatBarringtonPublicTheater
through September 6, 2026
By Suzanne Wells
With “Yellow Wallpaper 2.0,” Great Barrington Public Theater closes its summer season with a world premiere that transforms Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” into a contemporary study of confinement, identity, and psychological suspense. Written by Jennifer Maisel, directed by Judy Braha, and staged at Saint James Place, the production derives from one woman’s unraveling in a room that becomes an incubator of paranoia.
Set in the single bedroom of a New York City apartment at the start of the Covid pandemic, T, played by Cloteal L. Horne, struggles to hold together her roles as caretaker, wife, mother, and adjunct professor as lockdown magnifies the pressures inside her home. Fearing infection, she retreats into the room and begins to unravel under the weight of inequity, maternal guilt, and a need for intellectual and emotional companionship. As she turns to “The Yellow Wallpaper,” T imagines Gilman as an ideal confidante, only to fracture when the ideal gives way to flawed reality.
From that confined premise, the script grounds T’s unraveling in familiar pandemic rituals—masking, hand sanitizer, Lysol wipes, home quarantine, neighborhood concerts, and applause for essential workers—while keeping the focus on the broader forces of isolation, caregiving, and gendered labor.
That psychological strain depends heavily on Horne’s solo performance, which gives the production its force, dynamically shifting through a range of emotions, illness, and haunting delusions while using the confined playing space to draw the audience into T’s unraveling. Her sustained energy makes T’s instability feel real, human, and unsettling.
The physical world around her deepens the same pressure. The bedroom design, by Juliana von Haubrich, intensifies that psychological pressure: faded, grimy yellow wallpaper, a squeaky brass bed, a dated leather chair, and antiquated lighting create a claustrophobic world that feels at once domestic and diseased. Together, these elements give the production a keen sense of unease.
“Yellow Wallpaper 2.0” is an unsettling production that honors the original short story while pressing its concerns about social issues into a contemporary theatrical work.
This play is not recommended for children under the age of 14.