Review: "The Yellow Wallpaper" at The Archive Theater is a Must-See Production

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Relevant, important, and just about perfectly executed

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Just want to say, right away, I’m absolutely recommending THE YELLOW WALLPAPER. It seems in times like these that many of us would seek a more uplifting way to spend two hours, but stick with me. This one is relevant, important, and just about perfectly executed.

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Many of us remember The Yellow Wallpaper from English or Lit class. Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself said “it was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.” We live in a post-truth era when so many of us feel as if reality is being bent by those who desperately wish to control the narrative about our country and world. That may be reason enough to attend a performance of THE YELLOW WALLPAPER.

It’s an existential quandary you might not expect to find reflected in this excellently adapted two-hander by local playwright Jeff Davis . ICYMI, Gilman was a feminist, suffragist, lecturer, and social reformer who struggled with depression and experienced firsthand the damaging “rest cure” prescribed to women whose emotional and psychological distress was often dismissed or misunderstood. Davis publicly acknowledges his own struggle with depression, and the story captivated him when he encountered it in a high school English class. Years later, he returned to Gilman’s story as a playwright, transforming its intensely interior narrative into this theatrical experience that is THE YELLOW WALLPAPER.

Design for this show plays an unusually outsized role thanks to Gilman’s story, and creativity shines here. Despite the economical space in the black box that is Trinity Street Theatre, Cody Arn’s scenic design excellently fulfills the mind’s image of the dingy, bleak room in which John (Mon Darter) and his infuriatingly unnamed “Wife” (Sadie Okerstrom) carry out the story. Even writing “John” and “Wife” here produces a simultaneous shudder of admiration and outrage. Well played, Jeff Davis , well played.

Arn’s walls creak and shake and sometimes serve as the better psychological mate to Wife than John. You can practically smell the age in this room. While a technical difficulty prevented us from experiencing Victoria Schwartz’s usually stellar sound design, production values are superior for this show. The fastidious Amy Lewis has provided this intimate production with gorgeous and creepy lighting worthy of much larger venues and shows. Jennifer Rose Davis perfects costume design, as usual. And if you know theatre, you’ll understand this “little” show was a huge undertaking. I don’t have room to mention everyone behind the scenes who made this possible. There’s a danger of embellishing with a show like this, and this crew has hit the Goldilocks “just right” spot of production values.

Playwright, director, and actors intersect to give us a formula that makes THE YELLOW WALLPAPER truly believable. Wisely and humbly avoiding his lone perspective and taking ideas and cues from the women who have become integral to his adaptation along the way, Davis has produced a script rich in realistic dialogue in this iteration of his rewrite. His fear of the first version having a melodramatic flair has paid off in the ideas from others, his further dramaturgy, and, well, a gift for playwriting. This version of THE YELLOW WALLPAPER is worth producing in theatres and colleges across the country. It’s an authentic, real, and unforced work about mental health and the maddening paternalism of Gilman’s time.

Director Faith Sanders rises to the challenge of pacing this story. Does the story unfold slowly? Yes. Is the play itself slow? Not in my experience. Her staging is tight, and her blocking is a master class, really, in the proverbial game of cat and mouse onstage. Sadie Okerstrom strikes a balance as a powerful, self-aware woman who has been conditioned to submit to John’s knowledge, not just as her husband, but more detrimentally, as a doctor. This layered, deliberate performance makes us question not so much her depression as John’s capacity as a physician. Mon Darter’s John is fastidious, clipped, brisk, and strangely—not unlikeable. We’re skeptical of him at first, though Okerstrom’s Wife softens us toward him. Her disposition is powerful, until it isn’t. Their performances are layered. They both blur the lines between insanity and certainty and descend into hell together, a perfect coupling of control, power, and doubt.

This version of the story concludes with a different ending than you might expect, but I can’t give that away. The walls move and creak. The place is haunted—or is it? Whose reality is bent? It’s rich with the theatrical ambiguity of reality. This is certainly not escapism, though there is a kind of escape within it. Is the show entertaining? Depends on how you define entertaining. I’d say yes. I like my theatre provocative, enraging, thoughtful, and well executed. You’ll get that with THE YELLOW WALLPAPER.

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

by Jeff Davis

adapted from an 1892 story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Directed by Faith Sanders

The Archive Theater Company

September 4th through September 20th, 2026

Trinity Street Players

Black Box Theatre, 4th floor, First Baptist Church

901 Trinity Street

Austin, TX, 78701

Trigger Warning: The Yellow Wallpaper contains depictions and discussions of severe mental illness, psychological distress, forced confinement, medical procedures, suicidal ideation, and emotional abuse.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/austin/article/Review-THE-YELLOW-WALLPAPER-at-The-Archive-Theater-20260910)._