Fringe 2024 A Room of One's Own The Fringe at Prestonfield The Marquee 18th August Review
A Room of One’s Own by Dyad Productions is at Prestonfield –The Marquee (Venue 105) from 18 to 25 August, and if you have any interest in the works of Virginia Woolf, the struggle of women across the centuries for financial and artistic freedoms, or just a tightly scripted and wonderfully performed work of theatre that passes all too quickly in time, then this could be the show for you.
Over the years, I have always tried not to miss any work that Dyad Productions brought to the Fringe and one big reason for that is Rebecca Vaughan and her chameleon-like ability to become so many different people, so many different personalities on-stage, and today her performance as Virginia Woolf was simply another masterclass in performing a solo show on-stage to a live audience.
“A Room of One’s Own” is based around the published version of two lectures that the author Virginia Woolf had given to various women’s colleges in 1928. Written within a decade of women gaining the right to vote (even then a limited right), Virginia Woolf speaks again through Rebecca Vaughan who asks many questions about how women have been portrayed in the arts throughout the centuries and how this often conflicts with a woman’s legal status, educational opportunities and, perhaps most of all, their ability to generate an income of their own completely independent of any men.
Rebecca Vaughan has a gift for not only making any character that she performs believable, but also for absorbing any audience into the world that she is creating using only words, her performance skills and the most minimal of stage sets. There is a carefully constructed background audio soundscape to this performance, but you have to listen very closely at times to realise it is there, as it is very subtle and used sparingly.
Virginia Woolf/Rebecca Vaughan is, during this performance, inviting everyone to guess at how the world will have changed for women 100 years forward in 2028. We are so close to that date that I wonder just how she would have reacted. A mixture of sheer delight and sheer disappointment I think would have been her reactions.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Over the years, I have always tried not to miss any work that Dyad Productions brought to the Fringe and one big reason for that is Rebecca Vaughan and her chameleon-like ability to become so many different people, so many different personalities on-stage, and today her performance as Virginia Woolf was simply another masterclass in performing a solo show on-stage to a live audience.
“A Room of One’s Own” is based around the published version of two lectures that the author Virginia Woolf had given to various women’s colleges in 1928. Written within a decade of women gaining the right to vote (even then a limited right), Virginia Woolf speaks again through Rebecca Vaughan who asks many questions about how women have been portrayed in the arts throughout the centuries and how this often conflicts with a woman’s legal status, educational opportunities and, perhaps most of all, their ability to generate an income of their own completely independent of any men.
Rebecca Vaughan has a gift for not only making any character that she performs believable, but also for absorbing any audience into the world that she is creating using only words, her performance skills and the most minimal of stage sets. There is a carefully constructed background audio soundscape to this performance, but you have to listen very closely at times to realise it is there, as it is very subtle and used sparingly.
Virginia Woolf/Rebecca Vaughan is, during this performance, inviting everyone to guess at how the world will have changed for women 100 years forward in 2028. We are so close to that date that I wonder just how she would have reacted. A mixture of sheer delight and sheer disappointment I think would have been her reactions.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com