BWW Toronto Review Special: A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN at Campbell House Museum

Review by: Leora Heilbronn

A few months ago author/professor David Gilmour rattled and shocked the literary world with his bombastic declaration that he refuses to teach books written by women. The only female writer he was willing to bend his misogynistic rule for? Virginia Woolf. In the weeks that have followed these statements, prestigious highbrow literary awards have been handed to Eleanor Catton, Lynn Coady, and Alice Munro. It is thus with exquisite timing that the Bloomsbury Collective brings to Toronto an exclusive run of A Room of One's Own, a re-enactment and Patrick Garland's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's landmark speech from 1928.

Guests of the interactive show enter the beautiful and historic Campbell House Museum and are instantly magically transported to Girton Women's College in the late 1920s. Glasses of the cheekily named Guilty Men wine are politely sipped while cellist Cheryl O plays and a crackling fireplace is tended to by a handsome young man in formal attire. Copies of The Girton Gazette, a newspaper meticulously put together for the occasion (which includes fascinating ads from the 1920s of household brands such as Coca-Cola, Listerine and Guinness) are politely perused among the large crowd. We are then ushered upstairs to an intimate sitting room and the Head Girl at Girton (played by the comedic ingenue Kayla Lorette) broadcasts the weekly College announcements. She finishes off by presenting Virginia Woolf (brilliantly brought to life by Naomi Wright), who then mesmerizingly gives her iconic speech (pieced together from Woolf's speech at Girton in 1928 and her follow up speech at Newnham College in 1929) to the spellbound audience.

Originally workshopped as part of director Sarah Rogers' Masters Degree, the all female Bloomsbury Collective has staged a very timely interactive experience. Although 85 years have passed since Virginia Woolf originally gave her speeches, women today are still silenced in public institutions and gender stereotypes abound. As a society we are still sorely in need of female public role models. It was then no surprise that upon glancing at the women in the audience following the speech a confident and transformative beam of energy permeated from them. Naomi Wright's electric tour de force performance is a must see experience.

A Room of One's Own runs from November 13th to 24th at the Campbell House Museum. Select shows feature a Talk Back Salon following the performance.

To follow Leora on Twitter, visit @leoraheilbronn.

For tickets, visit http://www.aroomofonesown.ca/tickets.html.

Photo by Emily Cooper

To post a comment, you must register and login.