“The Sound Inside” playing at the Cohoes Music Hall through Sunday is a fascinating play.
It’s one of those rare pieces of theater that would be a satisfying read, or an excellent audio book. This Creative License production shows that the material works best as a live performance.
If the experience has to be defined, it’s pure storytelling. By plays end you know each character, their dilemmas and their personal roadblocks.
It also makes clear that this specialized material cannot survive with just any cast. It takes two disciplined actors and a director who understands both the material and how to work with actors.
Aaron Holbritter is that director and the cast is the superb Colleen Lovett and the talented Russell Roberts. They not only create enigmatic characters, they make honest an unlikely emotional bond. Because the intriguing language of playwright Adam Rapp is delivered more in direct address than it is with dialogue, it is an incredible challenge for all. Even the audience. The unique style of the work and material that reveals itself gradually and obliquely means an audience member must commit total concentration throughout the 90-minute running time, without an intermission.
Because so much information is delivered by characters breaking the fourth wall, you are impressed by the actors who leave and reenter the play without breaking character or continuity. Lovett excels in being both the play’s central figure and its narrator. She is dying of cancer and is able to see herself realistically and without self-pity. Lovett is compelling in her extended monologues finding nuance and honesty in telling her story to the audience. What could be a boring opening 13-minutes of a woman speaking alone on stage turns into a wonderful place-setting experience.
Since this is storytelling in the form of a novel, a lot of information is offered through self-observation. Therefore, not everything can be trusted. Critical to the success of the play is that Lovett’s character, Bella, turns out to be the person she initially describes.
As a professor of Creative Writing at Yale, Bella agrees to mentor a brilliant, brash loner, Christopher. The young man is attempting to write what he is certain will be a great novel. This does not turn into a mawkish May-September romance. Feelings do develop between them but it is more about two loners learning to come to terms with where they fit in the world. Thanks to Roberts’ subtle underplaying of Christopher, we intuit the young man has problems, but they seem to define him rather than appear odd.
Kudos to both actors who mostly overcome the problems of emotional distancing that often accompanies this style of writing. It takes time to become deeply invested with the characters, but by plays end we care about what happens or doesn’t happen to them.
If ever a play needed the guidance of a strong director it is “The Sound Inside.” It takes great insight to guide the actors to sensitive performances in a play with minimum dialogue. Every word and gesture either creates or supports a mood. In this production Holbritter establishes mood as a third character. That mood is supported by a sparse but ideal set and a wonderful lighting design.
There is much insight in the play and many conclusions to be drawn through the interaction of the two characters. At the very least, without being pretentious, playwright Rapp has you thinking about the purpose of life and how irrational can be the timing of death. This and the uncertainty of Bella’s future offers you a lot to think about after leaving the theater.
“The Sound Inside” continues through Sunday at the Cohoes Music Hall in Cohoes. For tickets and schedule go to cohoesmusichall.org.
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
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