Reader Reviews
The Silence of the Sea (Trafalgar Studios (previously the Whitehall), West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | This is not an easy play to stage or to watch but the effort is rewarded even if it is with a deliberately opaque ending. Leo Bill is typically wired as a German officer billeted on a French labourer and his unresponsive neice who meet his attempts at conversation with glacial silence. Finbar Lynch as the Frenchman provides a narration direct to the audience but this always seems to be a clumsy device in a theatre. Bill manages to find surprising empathy as he tries to ingratiate himself, seemingly unaware of his position as a hated invader of home and country and Simone Bitmate does wonders with an almost entirely silent role, finally revealing a suggestion of caring when Bill announces he has applied for a suicidal transfer to the Russian front. Simon Evans creates an air of tension and Gregory Clarke provides atmospheric sound effects especially at the climax even if Vercor does not spell out exactly what is behind the sounds of destruction. By the time I reached the tube station I had worked out my version (a final act of revenge compromised by the girl's gasp of possible affection), but even if that was not what the author intended it does show how this short play lodges in the mind. - David Baxter | 25 Jan 13 |
