Review - Small Mouth Sounds

I don't know how I missed the production of Small Mouth Sounds last season at Ars Nova, but miss it, I did.  It got rave reviews, pretty much across the board, so it's being brought back.  Now the production is being done in a larger space, over at my favorite spot, the Pershing Square Signature Center - I picked up a TDF ticket for last night (and this will probably be my last show for awhile, unless I win one of the 32 ticket lotteries I enter every day) and was happy to head to my happy place.

I didn't know anything about the play before seeing it, nor did I read any of the reviews of the previous production.  I think going in with no idea about the show is the best idea, so after I say that I think you should go see Small Mouth Sounds because I loved it, you might want to skip the rest of the review, because it will have some spoilers. Sorry.

Small Mouth Sounds begins with a man sitting on a platform at one end of the theater space.  Gradually, a few other people come in, one by one.  When we hear a recorded voice, serenely describing what the next few days will be like, we realize that the six people on stage are at a retreat, taking place at some sort of rural spa, and that they're there to find themselves or divest themselves of something.  The surprising part was, after that first scene, the unseen speaker/leader tells us all that the retreat will be a silent one. Yes, we're seeing a play with no words.

photo credit: Julieta Cervantes (from the Ars Nova production)

Of course, there is some dialogue, here and there, but this is mainly a 100-minute talk-free play.  But we are never unsure about what's going on or what people are thinking/feeling. These actors are expert at wordless interaction and there is so much humor and so much pain in this play, it's amazing to think that most of it was performed in silence.  Each character is so fully-realized and we even get backstories, all without words.  I'm sort of gobsmacked at how the playwright, Bess Wohl, and the director (rapidly becoming one of my favorites) Rachel Chavkin, accomplished this.

The play simultaneously sends up new age-y gurus and enlightenment that costs a lot of money, while also showing us how we're alone, yet not alone in this world.  And how what we do affects ourselves and others around us, often without saying a word.  I was constantly surprised by what was happening on stage and what I was feeling - bravo, really, to the amazing actors who did so much without saying much at all: Max Baker, Babak Tafti, Brad Heberlee (who actually has the only real monologue in the play and it is a doozy, which he handles beautifully), Marcia DeBonis, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Zoe Winters and the unseen Jojo Gonzalez (who also makes the unseen speaker/leader/guru a three-dimensional character, even over the loudspeaker).  Again, there is a lot of humor, I laughed out loud a lot, and a lot of pathos (yes, I also cried) going on in this play. 

With a play like Small Mouth Sounds, the audience is either on board completely, or not at all.  You can either accept the conceit of no dialogue or you can't.  At least that's how I saw it last night, there didn't seem to be any in-between.  Unfortunately, the seat neighbors on both sides of me were not on board, so that was a drag. One guy kept putting his assisted listening device on and off, on and off; he was just frustrated, I guess. And his lady friend finally fell asleep, which was good, because her sighing got to be a bit much.  The nattily-dressed men on the other side of me kept talking to each other, I guess because they needed to hear someone talking.  Urg. Oh, and then there was the lady across from me who felt the need to look at her phone only during the blackouts. Grrrr...

The theater is set up with seats along each long end of the Linney Theater, and the platform is at one end and there's a door at the other.  There are three rows on each side with quite a few seats.  I would think they would've handled the situating of the stairs a little better - some of the volunteer ushers were sending people off a rather large step to get to the other side. One lady of a certain age nearly fell, so I think they should maybe rethink the way they seat people.  I will also say that my seat was about as far from the main staging platform as possible, so my neck really started to ache by the end of the show.  I was afraid the entire play would take place up there, but thankfully many scenes happened in the playing space right in front of me, too, so my neck could untense.  I'm glad I was in the back row so I could at least fidget and lean back against the back wall without disturbing anyone.  I mean, it didn't affect my enjoyment of the play in any way, but I was uncomfortable now and then.  And I don't know why we didn't get our Playbills until after the play, unless the theater didn't want everyone rustling through them trying to figure out who was who.  Since we didn't really learn characters' names until late in the game, maybe it made sense to not let the audience get distracted.  But then why were the Playbills stuffed with the 'turn your cellphone off' flyers if we were getting them after the play?  One of life's mysteries, I guess.

Small Mouth Sounds is unlike anything I've ever seen before and I was so taken with it.  I loved the audacity of it and I thought the acting was the finest I've seen, across the board, in a long time.  I highly recommend you see it.  It opens tonight, so maybe you should look for discount tickets now, before the rave reviews are repeated tonight.  I think I'm going to try to go back - I would love to pay more attention to how the piece is put together now that I know what happens.  But I'm ever so glad I didn't miss this utterly original play for a second time...