Theatre review: Is This A Room, State Theatre Centre of WA, Perth Festival

New York playwright-director Tina Satter’s This A Room is based on a transcript of the interrogation by two FBI agents of a military contractor suspected of leaking a report on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. The officers are male, and both carry guns; the contractor is a young woman called Reality Winner (a name no playwright could invent, although someone presumably did) who lives alone (apart from an anxious cat and rescue dog) in a rented house in Augusta, Georgia. When the transcript begins, the officers intercept her outside her home when she returns from grocery shopping. There’s a third agent who also speaks but doesn’t identify himself and is referred to in the transcript (and the cast list) as ‘Unknown Male’. 

The ‘dialogue’ alone is riveting; interrogation has made for gripping theatre at least since Oedipus. Even if we know what the outcome will be (as is probably the case in Oedipus as well as here, at least if we’ve done our homework), the suspense lies not in ‘whodunit’ but in how the action unfolds, and in the capacity of theatre and writing (even – and perhaps especially – when it’s based on a verbatim transcript) to absorb us in the present moment such that we forget what we already know. The suspense is all the greater because of the alternation between overt interrogation and more banal exchanges about pets or celebrities (which may or may not be a tactic).

In Satter’s production however, even more than the dialogue, it was the staging and performances that kept us on the edge of our seats. The action took place on a bare stage apart from some functional steps at the back and sides. The lighting was a general wash apart from abrupt changes in colour or temperature (or the occasional blackout) whenever there was a redaction in the transcript (depending on the length of the redaction). The sound design consisted of electronically processed diegetic noises (dog barks, unintelligible bursts of communication or static from walkie-talkies) that came and went unpredictably and were mostly muffled, except for loud crashes that accompanied the lighting changes when there was a redaction. 

Costumes were hyper-realistic, but finely nuanced: Winner wore a white shirt, cut-off jean shorts and bright yellow trainers. Her two interrogators packed very visible guns, in surreal contrast with their drab leisure wear; the ‘Unknown Male’ sported a bulletproof vest. Props were minimal and functional: Winner had a black backpack and carried a white plastic shopping bag; the guns looked disturbingly real. The glaring exception was an obviously fake dog, which was carried across the stage twice and gently puppeteered by the Unknown Male. 

The performances were likewise mostly naturalistic, nuanced and verged on cringe-comedy, except when they veered into stylisation; for example, when the three agents repeatedly made synchronised lunges towards Winner to warn her not to say or do something that could make things worse for her. Throughout, there was a puppet-like awkwardness about their movements and postures, especially when they invaded her personal space.

In an interview, Satter has said that her previous work with the ensemble (the company name ‘Half Straddle’ gives the game away) has been similarly ‘female-centric’, but neither verbatim nor naturalistic. There’s an element of deadpan feminist camp to Is This A Room that felt very ‘New York’ to this reviewer. In fact the show premiered off-off-Broadway in 2019; but its inclusion in the Perth Festival 2025 program couldn’t be more timely. 

Winner was interrogated in 2017, coincidentally on the same day that then head of the FBI James Comey was fired by first-term President Trump for refusing to end the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The following year, she was given a five-year prison sentence, the longest ever imposed for leaking government information to the media. The report she leaked found that Russian agents had hacked into US voter registration rolls.

Read: Dance review: Tantrum for 6, Northcote Town Hall

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have now arguably completed the job in the first few weeks of Trump’s second term by hacking into the entire federal government computer system and leaving the door wide open behind them.

Is This A Room
Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA
Creator and Director: Tina Satter
Composer: Sanae Yamada
Costume Designer: Enver Chakartash
Set Designer: Parker Lutz
Lighting Designer: Thomas Dunn
Sculptural Designer: Amanda Villalobos
Stage Manager: Maurina Lioce
Technical Director and Audio Engineer: Jørgen Skjærvold
Lighting Associate: Krista Smith
Company Manager: Becky Hermenze
Producer: Mariana Catalina
Cast: Susannah Perkins, Pete Simpson, Will Cobbs, Becca Blackwell

Is This A Room was performed 14-17 February 2025 as part of Perth Festival.