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Synopsis Meet Pete and Jane and Leon and Sonja. Pete is married to Jane. Sonja is married to Leon. Pete meets Sonja in a bar and they go back to a cheap hotel room. Leon meets Jane in a bar and they go back to a cheap hotel room. A double infidelity. Except Pete and Sonja don't go through with it. And so starts a chain of events that impact on the lives of others with devastating consequences.
Andrew Bovell's Speaking in Tongues - the source for the acclaimed 2001 film Lantana - opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre this week, marking a return to the London stage for Life on Mars star John Simm (See 1st Night Photos, 29 Sep 2009).
Co-starring Lucy Cohu, Ian Hart and Kerry Fox, the production, which is directed by Toby Frow, marks the West End debut for a play written nearly 15 years ago.
Speaking in Tongues centres on nine parallel lives - interlocked by four infidelities, one missing person and a mysterious stiletto - which are interwoven through a fragmented series of confessionals, interrogations and ‘split-screen’ scenes, all drawn together by the investigations of Simm's character, Leon Zat.
Overnight critics were more unanimous in their reactions than they were earlier in the year to the Almeida's mounting of Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling (See Review Round-up, 26 May 2009). However, for all the plaudits - “compelling”, “intelligent”, “sharp” - it was difficult to find an out-and-out rave among the broadsheet pages. Of the performances, all four cast members acquitted themselves well, successfully navigating a plot that the Guardian's Michael Billington described as a “theatrical spaghetti junction”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (three stars) - "Not so much a thriller as a diagrammatic puzzle, Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues is an engaging, challenging play that falls at the last fence because the language is not as witty, strange or poetic as the narrative outline. In the end, you feel, so what? … Toby Frow’s gloomy-in-a-good-way production also boasts fine technical contributions from Lucy Cohu, Kerry Fox and, as Simm’s more jug-eared doppelganger, almost, Ian Hart ... It’s riveting without being very exciting, something I felt about Bovell’s climate change epic at the Almeida earlier this year, When the Rain Stops Falling. He’s a clever architect, a maestro of dramatic scheming … It makes for a decent, intelligent night out, but it doesn’t smell like a hit.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (four stars) - “Either the unnamed town in which Andrew Bovell sets this play is very small or there’s a strange erotic magnetism in its air … Four actors play nine characters, sometimes speak in unison, and appear in scenes that cut into each other and don’t always follow the laws of time. But Bovell’s dramatic knots aren’t Gordian tangles or even over-intricate sheepshanks from Scouting for Boys. Thanks to his sharp writing and Toby Frow’s adroit handling of an able cast, the job of unravelling the plot proves manageable, rewarding and purposeful … Lucy Cohu is both glamorous, confused Sonja and that outwardly authoritative, inwardly troubled shrink. And Ian Hart has three roles, most strikingly Neil, an obsessed nerd who has spent years haplessly pursuing the woman he loved and lost, Sarah.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (three stars) - "While it mystifies and entertains, I felt irked by its lack of cultural specificity: it seems to be happening anywhere-in-general and nowhere-in-particular. The plot is a theatrical spaghetti junction … What Bovell is saying gradually becomes clear: Trust, whether between husband and wife, supposed lovers or therapist and patient, is dismayingly rare; and although we live in a world of hidden connections, we are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins … John Simm as an adulterous cop and Lucy Cohu as his fraught wife are particularly good at conveying the nervy irritation that comes when all passion is spent. Ian Hart as the therapist's guilt-ridden husband and Kerry Fox as her querulous patient also add to their air of accumulating tension."
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (four stars) - “The movie struck me as a slightly dodgy piece of Aussie film noir but the complex story works far better as a play. This is an absorbing work about trust and betrayal, love, desire and guilt - and you need to give it time, and full attention … I’m prepared to forgive the play its weaknesses because the plot is so compelling and the correspondences between the different characters played by the same actors become so intriguing … There are fine performances from all four actors. John Simm, so superb as the bewildered cop in the Life on Mars television series, once again plays a detective with bruised humanity and sharp wit, but he also gets to play a character who might be a murderer. Kerry Fox doubles as a gauche wife with self esteem problems and a strangely sinister woman seeking counselling for her relationship problems; Ian Hart unearths moments of unbearable pain in both his main roles while Lucy Cohu persuasively moves from seductive wife to terrified victim.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (three stars) - "Andrew Bovell’s brittle drama of loneliness and betrayal calls to mind that hoary sporting cliché 'It’s a game of two halves'. For this is a play that could end at the interval … I would pay good money to watch any of Lucy Cohu, John Simm, Kerry Fox and Ian Hart on the stage. To see them all together might be regarded as a lavish treat, and of the four the nervily protean Hart and luminously engaging Cohu stand out here. Toby Frow’s production emphasises the cinematic qualities of Bovell’s play … Yet as it fidgets towards its quixotically inconclusive ending, its smart pretentiousness calls to mind a David Lynch movie - enigmatic, disorientating and brutal, perhaps, but at the same time strangely tenuous."
Not so much a thriller as a diagrammatic puzzle, Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues is an engaging, challenging play that falls at the last fence because the language is not as witty, strange or poetic as the narrative outline. In the end, you feel, so what?
Two married couples are simultaneously apart on the brink of adultery in a hotel bedroom with each other’s other half. One of the men, Leon, is a policeman who, in the second act, investigates the disappearance of a psychiatrist whose shoe was found in a bush in the first act.
John Simm, making another impressive West End appearance following his performance in Elling two years ago, plays the cop with a dry, detached precision, while Toby Frow’s gloomy-in-a-good-way production also boasts fine technical contributions from Lucy Cohu, Kerry Fox and, as Simm’s more jug-eared doppelganger, almost, Ian Hart.
These four play all nine characters in a set of variations on a theme of lust and betrayal played out in a grey design by Ben Stones that creates a suffocating atmosphere in the bar and bedroom before sliding open more mysteriously to reveal a photographically represented tangled woodland and the looming arrival of a significant motor car.
It’s riveting without being very exciting, something I felt about Bovell’s climate change epic at the Almeida earlier this year, When the Rain Stops Falling. He’s a clever architect, a maestro of dramatic scheming.
This 1996 play, although seen at Hampstead in 2000, is best known for its movie version, Lantana, starring Antony LaPaglia as the cop, Barbara Hershey as the psychiatrist and Geoffrey Rush as her husband, and there’s much more sense in the film of the suburban setting and claustrophobia in the build-up and close-ups.
But the stage version lays out the narrative bones, and the structure, more clearly and thrives on the sharp leaps and kick-backs in the acting, which are well-controlled throughout and cleverly illuminated in Johanna Town’s great lighting and Lorna Heavey’s video and projection sequences. It makes for a decent, intelligent night out, but it doesn’t smell like a hit.
At last a play to challenge as well as entertain. If you want candyfloss then catch a trite musical (I found Sister Act inane); if you want theatre, beautiful writing and compelling performances then Speaking For Tongues is for you. It's clever and contrived and thought-provoking. The best thing since God of Carnage. I urge all lovers of drama to take up one of the many deals on offer and exercise your brain; enjoy the irony.
- Carrie Cohen
06 Nov 09
To call this play contrived would ennoble it. The writer has nothing to say about marriage or infidelity that a teenager couldn't imagine, and the whole piece is more redolent of a piano exercise than a concert piece. The actors seem to sense that and rarely get out of second gear. The director has tried to rely on that old stalwart - back projection - to liven it up, but really this play isn't good enough to be put on. Not a patch on When the Rain Stops Falling, despite Lucy Cohu's excellent performance. - dgr1
05 Nov 09
What the hell was that about? I can see how the overlapping dialogue and split screen effects will have worked in the film version, but on stage it's distracting. The interlocking stories of nine characters gradually unfolds and comes together in an intriguing way but it does not come to a conclusion - it just stops. An interesting attempt at something different but ultimately it failed as a peice of satisfying theatre. - David Baxter
04 Nov 09
I very much enjoyed Australian playwright Andrew Bovell’s epic ‘When The Rain Stops Falling’ at the Almeida earlier in the year. This one is just as original and intriguing but less satisfying. Again, it’s the structure which impresses. With nine characters played by four actors, it unfolds like a mystery. The first two scenes have the same lines spoken simultaneously by different characters to different counterparts in the same space. It’s all very clever and it’s very well performed and I have nothing but admiration for the producer’s bravery in putting it on in the West End. If you like plays that challenge you, go and see this. - Gareth James
18 Oct 09
My play of the year - will see it again (and maybe again) - dgjf
18 Oct 09
Very impressive production. Fascinating play and wonderful acting. - fred
30 Sep 09
Brilliant, thought-provoking and engaging. So so clever but hilarious and entertaining too. - Sam
29 Sep 09
I loved the speaking-over-each-other! Very clever device which allowed us to learn a lot about the characters in a short space of time - especially in the very slight differences in what they were saying. Intense, maybe even tough going, but worth it, I think. - anna
29 Sep 09
It was too complicated, people speaking over eachother, weird story line. I left at the interval. Sorry! - Carly
Opened 10 Sep 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre,name changed in 1895. Major refurbishment 79/80. Taken over by the Royal Court during their two year refurbishment starting in 1996, called the Royal Court downstairs. 650 seats. Society of London Theatre member. An [ATG] member.
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