The Silence of the Sea

Synopsis

In a time of conflict, a soldier is billeted to the home of an old man and his niece. Powerless to turn him away, they resist him with silence - a silence that becomes their most potent weapon.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 15 January 2013

This has been a fine Donmar season of "foreign" plays by "new directors" in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios; Arbuzov’s The Promise and Strindberg's The Father are now followed by Anthony Weigh’s stealthy and beautifully wrought adaptation of a samizdat classic of the French Resistance.

Jean Bruller’s novella The Silence of the Sea was published under the pseudonym of Vercors in 1942 during the darkest days of the Occupation. It registers the sullen opposition of an old country odd job man and his piano-teaching niece – neither is named – to the enforced residency of a Nazi officer, Werner, billeted in their cottage.

Weigh’s adaptation follows this format, while giving voice to the reluctant hosts, and Simon Evans’s discreet, poetic production – reverberate with noises in the night and the distant lapping of the sea – contains three perfectly measured and skilfully discharged perfor...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 25 January 2013:

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....

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