The Human Voice

 

When: 8th April 2022

Where: Harold Pinter Theatre, London

Writer: Jean Cocteau

Director: Ivo Van Hove

(Spoilers Ahead)

When this play was first announced I was very tempted to buy tickets, but restrained myself as I already had a few things book in for later this year. When reviews started coming out they were largely mixed with The Guardian arguing that 'Ruth Wilson fails to connect', but with London Theatre claiming 'Wilson's striking performance connects'. With such differing opinons I decided to try and catch it before it closed on the 9th to form my own opinion, and I am so glad I did. 

One of the most interesting things about this performance is the way that they play with the idea of connection. The whole piece is about the connection she has with her ex lover, and how although they are apart physically they can still connect through the phone. In fact this connection becomes so strong to her at moments that she no longer needs the phone in her hand to talk to him. Yet despite this the majority of the performance takes place in a box behind a glass screen, totally disconnected from the audience. Although some may see this as a failure of the design, for me this was just another way the audience could connect even further to the character, we were experiencing the same physical distance as she was. This idea of being totally disconnected and yet connected at the same time, seemed to me to be the whole point of the performance. Particularly following the Lockdowns of the previous years we are reminded of how close we become when physically seperated. There were also moments when she did leave the box or open the glass screen, emulating a window, and the disconnection made these moment even more poignant. 

I loved the way the text was presented, we never heard the other person on the other end of the phone and yet we could always understand either exactly what he was saying or come up with an idea of what he could have been saying. We weren't given any context going in and so the audience were asked to form much of the story themselves through what she was saying and filling in gaps. This excited me as one of my favourite things to do when creating performance myself is giving the audience things to question and discuss, and by leaving so much open to audience interpretation there was so much to discuss leaving the theatre. I also think by the fact that I could tell so much about the relationship and by the end have a complete story arch by only hearing one side of a conversation was truly a testament to Ruth Wilsons performance. 

It wasn't about her creating a connection with us, we weren't in her world we were getting a view into a private conversation, and we are reminded of this everytime the older woman interuppts the phone line. The thing that was so incredible about Ruth Wilsons acting in this play was the lack of audience awareness, something we are told over and over again not to do when performing. The first 3 or 4 minutes of the play we are watching an empty box, she is off stage talking. She also spends a lot of time with her back turned to us, and walks off and back on again as if going into other rooms in the flat, without hesitation that anyone is watching. The first time she properly even looks in our direction is when she is looking at him out the window, pressing her face up against the glass. In fact the acting in the moment was so believable I turned my head to see if he was actually there. The acting throughout was highly realistic, Wilson fully understood the character, the situation and the depth of human nature, actually my friend who came with me asked if me if any of it was improvised as she fully believed the scene was being played so perfectly in real time. There were sections where she would just mess around have fun in the moment, much like everyone does when alone in their home, dancing along to Single ladies, and madly ripping up paper. There are also other moments when she feels like she is going through some sort of psychosis, with quickly changing emotions, talking as if he was there and strange moments where she barks like a dog. There was a moment when I thought she may have been on a mental health ward in a hospital, due to these strange moments, the blankness of the set and the fact that there was obviously still a huge amount of love in their relationship despite him marrying someone else. 

The use of sound was very clever, with a mixture of orchestral music and popular music. The orchestral almost represented the love that she still felt for him, in one moment when she is kissing his shoe the more she felt him there the more texure the music gained as if creating an image of a perfect memory of them together. She couldn't hear this music, but she could hear the pop music. At one moment she played 'Single ladies' over the top of orchestral music, at this moment the orchestra represented the cacophony of sound in her head that she was desperately trying to drown out. By showing us this through the music as well as the performance we were living it with her. I also found the choice to accompany the suicide at the end with 'Wrecking Ball' really intriguing, rather than the soft orchestral music normally used with such scenes. This moment was also added to further by the audience being plunged suddenly into complete darkness for at least a minute just listening to the music. This was such an interesting choice making a fairly uncomfortable and offputting experience for the audience. 

The set was also interesting, using a small box centred in the middle of the proscenium, this created a claustrophobic experience and also emphasised that idea of privacy once again. I found it interesting that the box was not solid, everytime she took her anger out on it, it would move forming ripples, and once again it felt like a physical representation of her emotion. The use of the glass screen also created a facsinating dynamic, it highlighted the disconnected theme, but when opened it could be used as a physical representation of her openess with him or the closeness of the moment as this varied throughout. I also thought that the way it represented a window and as it was opened we could hear the city traffic added another layer to piece and with this playing all the time the window was open, even under her speech, it added to the realism. The set had obviously been well thought through, however going with this theme of lack of audience awareness it felt that they had not properly thought through audience view points. The box was surrounded by a massive lip and although it created compelling images of her sat out on the ledge and obviously the ending of her standing on it arms stretched out, it meant that for practically all of the performance we could only see above her knees, and when she sat down often we could only see the top of her head. This may have been down to the fact that we were sat on the front row, but I'm not sure being anywhere else in the stalls would have made a difference, due to this box we were much lower than the floor and being further back would have only made her smaller. Despite this as suggested by the title much of it was about the voice and therefore this didn't detract too much from the performance. 

Overall I'm really happy I got a chance to see this before it closed, and I found it a thought-provoking and intruguing experience different once again to other things I have seen in the past. Ruth Wilson was incredible and the whole performance strongly relevant to the times we are living in today, it could not have come at a better moment.