The Yellow Wallpaper

In 1892 an unnamed woman passes the slow days of summer writing down her innermost thoughts while convalescing. Her observations focus on the strange effects of the peeling, fading, yellow wallpaper in her bedroom. The Spencer Library has created a unique audio experience in this chilling tale with profound psychological and moral implications. Claudette Sutherland gives a remarkable performance. Her subtly expressive voice is so skillfully recorded that her soft intakes of breath have a desperate life of their own. The haunting beauty of Carol Nethen's original score can momentarily distract, but it supports more than it interferes, a tribute both to the composer and to the excellence of the recording standards. The listener is rewarded with a fully realized dramatic performance with a strong musical presence. C.T. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

June 26, 2017
Yuen leads listeners convincingly through this beautifully wrought 1892 short story. She begins the first-person narrative with the voice of a sensible if somewhat distraught young woman confined by her doctor husband to an attic room with hideous yellow wallpaper and bars on the windows. She is thought to have a nervous condition and is permitted no activity, including writing, lest it tire her. Eschewing melodrama, Yuen gradually changes tone and inflection as the weeks pass and the wife starts tearing down the wallpaper, perceives another woman behind it trying to get out, and finally descends into madness. It’s a short, intoxicating listen that merits more than one replay.