‘A Room With A View’: This Brilliant Show Is One Of The Year’s Best

An utterly brilliant work of the stage that radiates humanity in every word spoken, A Room with a View at Belvoir St Theatre is truly a must-see show that you’ll desperately want to say that you saw in the years to come.

Based on E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel of the same name and taking cues from the 1985 film adaptation, A Room with a View closely follows the story you know but updates it with a refreshing sense of modernity. It tracks the tale of Lucy Honeychurch (Nathalie Morris) across a fateful summer in Tuscany.

There, she gets a taste of freedom from the confines of Edwardian England, even while her cousin Charlotte (Hayley McElhinney) does her best to prevent Lucy from catching feelings for the similarly aged George Emerson. She soon returns to England and becomes betrothed to the awful socialite Cecil Vyse (a spectacular Charles Wu), but things become complicated when, by pure happenstance, George and his father follow.

Taking place on a fairly sparse, anachronistic set, A Room with a View nonetheless lives and breathes as its characters do. This wonderful adaptation of Forster’s novel by Grace Chapple is directed brilliantly by Hannah Goodwin, who has found a tremendous cast to support her vision.

Rarely do you see a theatrical performance as wonderfully realised as Nathalie Morris’ Lucy, through which A Room with a View’s enduring poignancy flows like a river. An already intensely likeable character is made endlessly charming in her hands as Morris perfectly delivers every witty remark and cutting piece of dialogue to maximum effect.

A Room with a View shines with a love for life

Aiding in this is a truly tremendous script that deftly navigates the social restrictions of being a woman in the late 19th and early 20th century. Although Lucy falls in love with George – played with remarkable sensitivity and care by Luke Wiltshire – her engagement to Cecil shows the heavy expectations that come with social systems like marriage in this time period as a way to traverse class boundaries.

So too are other marginalised groups treated with a lack of respect, especially in A Room with a View’s directly queer elements. Lucy’s brother Freddy (Tomáš Kantor) and pastor Mr Beebe (Tom Conroy) are two gay men in this time period whose feelings for each other are most obviously portrayed via nudity, but also in the sensitivity present in their relationship in a world that doesn’t allow them to be who they truly are.

It’s here where A Room with a View’s most inspired choice comes into play: its use of music. In a play where identity and self-actualisation are essential themes, instrumentation is foundational to expressing how the characters truly feel. Lucy’s relationship to the piano communicates this clearly – she much prefers the bombast of Beethoven, but Cecil limits her to calm and “acceptable” compositions. Meanwhile, a transcendent musical moment with the seemingly strict Charlotte bookends the show in a breathtaking manner.

This staging of A Room with a View is rife with other examples of this subtle brilliance. It’s a show that feels brilliantly alive and utterly radiant in its love for theatre, music and life itself. Anchored by a truly sensational cast and astute, considered direction, it’s one of this year’s truly unmissable shows for the Sydney theatre scene.

A Room with a View is playing at Belvoir St Theatre until November 8th.