Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues is a curious little play. It hews to a deadpan (even occasionally bland) realism as it calls on actors to play two or three characters in the course of the evening. Its coincidences require a suspension of disbelief on the order of what Shakespeare expected, but it also burrows deep into the nature of relationships, offering a landscape that – in its own way – is as bleak and rich as Harold Pinter’s claustrophobic worlds.
The Milwaukee Rep’s new Artistic Director, Mark Clements, is a champion of the play, having directed both the American and European premieres (Bovell is Australian). So it’s not a surprise to see it on the Rep’s stages. And it’s a play that needs the touch of an actor-sensitive director like Laura Gordon, who allows the richness of the play’s ideas to speak through its actors.
To get to that richness, however, we have to weather a little tedium. Bovell’s early scenes present two married couples (Leon and Sonja; Jane and Pete) in two hotel rooms. But spouses have been shuffled, everyone is contemplating a first affair. Bovell sets the scene in one room, with the dialogue of each extramarital couple more or less simultaneous and identical. Gordon and her actors make the scene sound surprisingly natural, but it’s a rocky way to get things started. And when the two men and two women meet – by coincidence – and in a matter of a short conversation reveal their indiscretion (one adulterous couple goes through with it; one doesn’t), we seem to have crossed over into a romantic twilight zone.
But as subsequent scenes reveal, that’s exactly the point. As the two couples address their indiscretions, the play branches to include other characters and other stories. And when the lights come up on Act Two, we’re in a completely different world, hearing other stories of love, infidelity, and the darker mysteries of the heart. It’s all driving toward a single, tragic incident. And as we get closer, as the stories circle around each other and the themes and ideas echo back to the play’s opening, Speaking in Tongues finds a satisfying heft. When Bovell rewrote his play for film (2001’s Lantana), he started with an enigmatic image that suggests the story’s tragic end. It was a smart move.
Still, Gordon and her actors find a way around that early inertia by painting very clear and specific portraits of the play’s characters. The early scenes are mired in a kind of general Dr. Phil–speak, but the actors play the details well enough to keep us interested. As the navel-gazing turns outward, toward the stories we’re about to hear in the play’s second part, the characters start to come to life.
From there, the performances make Speaking in Tongues a compelling and fascinating look at the things we do for love. Jonathan Smoots, an actor known for his booming dramatic power, shows beautiful subtlety and detail in the low-key Nick. And as Neil, a man clinging to a long-lost love, he is absolutely heartbreaking. Deborah Staples finds the silent, fidgety pain in both Sonja and Valerie. Lee Ernst and Jenny McKnight each shine with two strikingly different characters.
