When Grace Chapple visited Florence, Italy, in 2022, she was listening to the audiobook of A Room with a View.
asserted
she → visit → View
Travelling solo for the first time, aged 27, she found herself in the Uffizi Gallery — where Botticelli's The Birth of Venus hangs — feeling unsure what to do with her life.
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Birth → travel → life
"I was thinking, 'Do I even know who I am?'" Chapple says.
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Chapple → think → ?
"You know that first time you're forced to confront yourself alone and how you interact with the world?"
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you → know → world
As she wandered the city, a little hungover, so too did the protagonist of the novel: Lucy Honeychurch.
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protagonist → wander → novel
In English author EM Forster's 1908 novel A Room with a View, Lucy visits Italy, chaperoned by her spinster cousin Charlotte Bartlett.
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Lucy → visit → cousin
There, she meets the charismatic but strange George Emerson and is wooed by another suitor, the wealthy but condescending Cecil Vyse.
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she → meet → suitor
It's the set-up for a love triangle, but Forster's novel was more than a romance; it's Lucy's coming-of-age story, which also pokes fun at turn-of-the-century English society.
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which → come → society
That complexity spurred Chapple to adapt it for Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre, where it opens this month before travelling to Melbourne Theatre Company.
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it → spur → Company
"The novel hit me hard," she says.
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she → hit → me
"It found me at the moment in my life where I really needed it."
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I → find → it
Listening to A Room with a View in Florence did more than inspire Chapple creatively.
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Listening → listen → Chapple
It encouraged her to "blow up" her life.
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It → encourage → life
Returning to Sydney, where she had moved from Perth to study playwriting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Chapple broke up with her long-term boyfriend.
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Chapple → return → boyfriend
"When you're stuck on train tracks in life, you need something huge to shake you out of it," Chapple says.
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Chapple → stick → it
Finding inspiration at home
That year, Chapple's debut play, Never Closer, set during the Troubles, premiered as part of Belvoir's independent 25A program.
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play → find → program
Two years later, it opened on the theatre's main stage.
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it → open → stage
A new production from indie company Patalog Theatre will return to Melbourne this month, after earning rave reviews in May.
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production → return → May
Never Closer is the story of five schoolfriends reuniting for Christmas Eve at Deidre's house in Northern Ireland in 1987.
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schoolfriends → reunite → 1987
Seeing each other a decade after they finished school, with many of them leaving Northern Ireland to work and study, unresolved tensions rise to the surface, especially after Niamh brings home her English fiancé Harry.
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Niamh → see → fiancé
It was the play Chapple wrote while studying at NIDA.
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Chapple → write → NIDA
She recalls being asked when she applied: "If you had a year left to live, what would you write about?"
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you → recall → what
She doesn't know why she burst into tears: "I just said, 'My mum'."
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I → know → tears
Chapple's mum grew up in Northern Ireland and moved to London at 17 to study medicine, where she met Chapple's dad, an Englishman.
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she → grow → dad
"That became the base of the play," Chapple explains.
"
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Chapple → become → play
But it was mixed in with the fact I had just left home for the first time and was dealing with all these weird feelings about leaving behind my friends and my home and not knowing if there would be a home to go back to.
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I → mix → friends
It made me think about my mum and how she never went back."
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she → make → mum
Beneath the period romance
After members of the Belvoir team saw Never Closer during its 25A season, they wanted to know what Chapple was going to do next.
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Chapple → see → what
"They were keen to invest in me as an artist," she says.
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she → invest → artist
They said, 'What else do you have?
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you → say → What
Is there anything you want to adapt you might be able to turn around quicker than an original?'
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you → want → original
"
When she listened to A Room with a View earlier that year, Chapple had been struck by its theatricality.
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Chapple → listen → theatricality
"[Forster] writes in scenes and it's all about relationships," she explains.
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she → write → relationships
"The action hinges around conversations."
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action → hinge → conversations
With buy-in from Never Closer director Hannah Goodwin, Chapple pitched the adaptation to Belvoir artistic director Eamon Flack.
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Chapple → pitch → Flack
"At first glance it feels like a quite conventional period romance … but the romance is really a vehicle for talking about more exciting political and transgressive topics than we're used to getting out of your Jane Austens," she explains.
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she → feel → Austens
Chapple says A Room with a View resonates with a modern audience because Lucy is, like all young people, "learning to think for yourself in a world that is really trying to tell you how to think".
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that → say → you
"It's about how dangerous it can be to a dominant culture when people start to break away and carve their own paths.
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people → start → paths
It's a journey everyone has to go on of figuring out how to live honestly in this world and be true to the person you are and how much that can cost."
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that → have → much
A show about the housing crisis
That question of cost is something Chapple is thinking about with her next project, her second original play, The Landlord, which will feature in Belvoir's 2027 season.
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which → think → season
…and 11 more, not listed.
The Aporia