Grace Chapple's vibrant, clever revision of EM Forster's 1908 novel A Room With a View is a radiant and full-hearted stage adaptation, now playing at Belvoir Upstairs Theatre in Sydney. The production, directed by Hannah Goodwin, follows the awakening of the very Edwardian and very English Lucy Honeychurch (Nathalie Morris) as she travels to Florence with her prim-and-proper cousin and chaperone Charlotte (Hayley McElhinney).
A Room With a View: The Story
While checking into their Italian hotel, the pair discover they do not have Lucy's much-wanted titular room with a view of the River Arno. When fellow English travellers Mr Emerson (Patrick Williams) and his son George (Luke Wiltshire) overhear them complaining, they instantly offer up their better-positioned rooms in exchange. It is entirely improper to agree, but Lucy's burgeoning hunger for beauty and feeling wins out.
Lucy also gets challenged by her acquaintance with the Emersons. Mr Emerson is an avowed socialist, arguing for recognition of the workers who helped construct the Basilica of Santa Croce after a tour guide insists the building was constructed by faith. His son George is similarly principled; when the younger pair witness an act of violence, it shocks them out of propriety and into a sincere connection. But the pull of expectation, class and safety is strong, and family friend Cecil Vyse (Charles Wu) would certainly be a more conventional match for Lucy.
A Romance on All Fronts
This adaptation is a romance on all fronts: there is real longing and desire between Lucy and George, but Lucy is falling in love with herself with just as much frisson and verve. It is also capital-R romantic, reaching out to the natural world and, in doing so, touching the divine.
Amelia Lever-Davidson's lighting warms, brightens and sparkles like sunlight through a window, at one point summoning a vivid expression of violets. Zoë Atkinson's set, all screens and window frames, closes off and expands the space in line with the characters' hearts. When Lucy's brother Freddy (Tomáš Kantor) joins George and Beebe in a liberating swim, the moment is suffused with the magic of play, connection and discovery. Queer undertones in the text are drawn out and given tender truthfulness, and a keyboard played by the cast complements Grace Ferguson's compositions, brought together by Madeleine Picard's sound design.
Emotional Honesty and Egalitarian Storytelling
Chapple's vibrant and clever script shifts fluidly from dialogue to third-person narration and back again, giving the audience the experience of storytelling as trading intimacies. The narration duties are shared among the cast, even giving an Italian cab driver (also Kantor) a moment to be the centre of the story. Even the often-tiresome Charlotte is given a moment of grace.
This egalitarian approach aligns strongly with Chapple's devotion to emotional honesty and with the evolving social and political views Lucy steps into over the course of the story: all voices matter and should be heard, honesty and humanity must be valued. It gives the play urgency and relevance in 2026, in a world where social spheres feel increasingly fragmented and fractious.
The cumulative effect is one of affirmation. The ensemble are deeply present, open and excellent. Because the play is written, directed and performed with such care, we believe – truly believe – in these characters. The result is kinesthetic: when they are relieved, we exhale; when they open up, we lean forward. When they reach a new depth of feeling, we are moved to tears. A Room With a View is on at Belvoir's Upstairs Theatre, Sydney until 1 November, then Melbourne's Southbank Theatre 14 November-19 December, and Perth's Black Swan Theatre 5-14 March.
