Brisbane review - Speaking in Tongues: an electrifying performance.

By Lilian Harrington

Production: Speaking in Tongues

Company: Ad Astra

Director: Heidi Gledhill

Location: 57 Misterton St. Fortitude  Valley

Season: 5 -28 September - (7 30.pm. Mat.2pm)

Bookings: Try bookings

Even if award winning Australian writer, Andrew Bovell is not everyone’s “cup of tea” due to his rather different approach to script writing, Ad Astra, has opened a thought provoking season of the talented writer’s award winning Speaking in Tongues, which was first performed in 1996, when it received an AWGIE award! Bovell later developed the movie version, entitled Lantana, which won several awards and starred Australian actor, Anthony LaPaglia.

The central theme in the play focuses on: love, marriage, infidelity and truth, and intertwines with the narrative in a complex and multifaceted form as the plot unfolds in a rather tangled format, similar to the creeping lantana plant, marital relationships can become toxic, and erode over time, just like an untended garden, where complications creep in. Speaking in Tongues is about complex marriage relationships, cheating partners, trust, sincerity, levels of honesty and disclosure.

Director, Heidi Gledhill has a cast of four very competent, diverse and experienced actors, who play nine roles. The four leads are well supported by the team of creatives lead by Stage manager Isabel Folland, who have all collaborated to create and highlight the special scenarios, atmosphere and nuance in each role. The actors include: Jazz Lane,( Sonja and Sarah), Lauren Dillion, (Jane and Valerie), James Dyke, ( Leon and Nick) and  the talented Doll Hunt (Pete, Neil and John).

An impressive performance was seen throughout by Dillion.  In Act 1, she made some positive choices in her role as Jane. She interpreted Jane, Steve’s wife, as a rather shy, unworldly, childless wife, who had gone out one evening looking for a one night stand, which she found with Leon, who was married to Sonja. She sought love and sexual gratification, things that were missing in her marriage to Steve. In the meantime her husband Steve, had gone looking for a night of passion and had met Leon’s wife Sonja, but unlike Jane, he could not go through with his intentions.

Dillion engaged the audience with her portrayal of the modest, frustrated Jane, and later changing into Valerie in Act 2, a skilled, confident, therapist, working with Sarah (Jazz Lane), her difficult client, in a business- like manner. She showed various layers in her role as Valerie, for instance, when she became stranded after her car broke down on a lonely road, she was a frightened woman who could not reach John (Doll Hunt) her husband, for help. Dillion showed Valerie‘s vulnerability accepting a lift from a stranger, Jane’s neighbour, Nick, (James Dyke), who drove her down a back -road. Scared, she hurriedly, exited the car, leaving a tell-tale shoe behind. She disappeared, leaving Nick as the key suspect in the following police investigation. Dillion portrayed her roles with sensitivity.

The play opened with choreographed movement and intersecting dialogue which was a challenge initially for listeners, simply to understand the multifaceted communication and connections. Several narratives are spoken in tandem, but all are tied together by thin threads, even if sometimes they seem blurred and not always clear, there remains an unspoken statement, a subtext, imaging the fears, anxiety, and hidden desires, that can influence the lives of partners and affect close relationships.

The creatives Chelsea Jewell, Maddy Leite and Tommi Civili, emphasised  the focus on the action, by designing a minimalistic set, around the onstage narrative, which served to support an electrifying but memorable performance and kept the audience awake and wondering.